
ULT HEALING 





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THE PRINCIPLES 

OF 

OCCULT HEALING 

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS WHICH 
INCLUDES ALL CURES 



STUDIES BY A GROUP OF 
THEOSOPHICAL STUDENTS 



EDITED BY 

MARY WEEKS BURNETT, M.D. 



THE HEALTH PUBLISHING CO. 

CHICAGO 

1916 






Copyright, 1916 
By MARY WEEKS BURNETT, M.D. 



AUG -71916 

©CI.A437135 



TO 

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY, 

HENRY STEELE OLCOTT, ANNIE BESANT, AND 

CHARLES W. LEADBEATER, WHO HAVE BROUGHT 

THEOSOPHY— THE DIVINE WISDOM — TO 

THE WESTERN WORLD. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword 5 

I. Occult Healing and Occultism. . . 11 
II. Occult Healing Schools 19 

III. Healing and the Healing Intel- 

ligence 27 

IV. All Healing Is Occult 31 

V. The Indestructible Self 38 

VI. Latent Powers in Matter 43 

VII. The Auras and the Ethers 50 

VIII. Two Principal Types of Cures 56 

IX. Polarization 61 

X. Healing by Prayer 64 

XL Angel or Deva Helpers 71 

XII. Music 87 

XIII. Healing by Thought-Forms and 

Color « 97 

XIV. Healing by Magnetism 101 

XV. Healing by Mesmerism 108 

XVI. The Healing Miracles of the 

Christ 113 

XVII. A Scientific Working Hypothesis. 122 

Addenda. Comments on the Report of the 
Clerical and Medical Committee 
of London, England 130 



FOREWORD 

"To Occult Medicine we shall owe discoveries 
destined to extend the domain of Philosophy," was 
the prophecy of the renowned French philosopher 
Descartes. Today, nearly three hundred years later, 
we find his words approaching fulfilment, for the 
world is face to face with a new movement in Thera- 
peutics. An insistent, increasing, persevering demand 
is arising for investigation into the hidden side of the 
Health law ; for a fuller, clearer light upon the Truth 
of Health itself. The hour of Occult Medicine has 
come. 

At present, however, the demand for the truth is not 
universal; instead, the conditions strongly exemplify 
the eternal struggle between the radical and the con- 
servative. The radicals include a very large num- 
ber of separate organizations of intellectual people 
who believe that the laws of Health are as yet but 
imperfectly known ; who are seeking to discover the 
hidden truths of Health which, from observed facts 
of healing, they are convinced will make them inde- 
pendent of drugs and surgical operations. To the 
radicals belong also the students of Sociology, who 
are demanding that measures for the prevention of 
disease and for the establishing of a true standanLof 
Health shall obtain, not alone for the classes, buflpSr 
the masses as well. 

s 



6 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

On the other hand, materialistic medical science, 
basing itself on the inviolability and invariableness of 
known physical laws, declares that healing other than 
by physical remedies is not practical ; that the cited 
cases of occult healing — where the disease is obscure, 
and the remedies used cannot be measured and 
handled — are not subject to fixed laws, and therefore 
that such cases are wholly outside the domain of scien- 
tific investigation. This ultimatum is supposed to 
preclude further discussion. 

But these so-called "unscientific" healings have oc- 
curred and are continually occurring; so there must 
be in this world, admittedly built and sustained by law, 
a law governing these cures. It is in the hope of help- 
ing to find a basis for the classification and scientific 
study of these many thousands of unclassified cures, 
to help to find the law of them, that this little book is 
written. 

It is fully in keeping with this intellectual evolution- 
ary progress that we shall attempt to apply religious, 
philosophic and scientific concepts in the solution of 
the more fundamental medical problems which are 
now coming to the front. For instance, we can more 
easily investigate and explain the oftentimes extremely 
difficult facts in cures, by noting their reciprocal 
relations with other laws of Nature. 

This is the age of scientific constructive hypotheses. 
Medicine is in process of construction. It is only in 
the experimental stage as yet, and experiment is its 
method. Its first law is to study facts; to observe 
reasonable caution in presenting explanations, and a 
willingness to recast conclusions that may have been 



FOREWORD 7 

arrived at on insufficient data ; to use the same open- 
mindeness, tolerance and fearlessness as do the re- 
searches in Astronomy or Physics. 

The demand of the age is, that a scientific study be 
made of the etheric bodies and the emotion and mental 
bodies of our every-day humanity ; that the power 
which the Self, the super-man, can assert over his own 
mind, his own emotions, and over the etheric elements 
in his physical body, shall be recognized and taught 
as a definite part of the larger therapeutics. In addi- 
tion to this, there must come an intellectual recog- 
nition that there are greater and lesser intelligences 
working in all matter. The subtler sense faculties of 
healers and healed must be trained to note the actual 
effect of thought and emotion upon and through human 
bodies. For this training no divine gift is needed. 
It is only necessary that healers shall learn to use the 
sense organs which already exist in these finer bodies, 
which belong to the phenomenal world of sense, but 
are, except in a small number of cases, as yet unde- 
veloped. 

Science, working in Physics, is demonstrating con- 
clusively by means of "rays" and "waves," that there 
are different grades of matter, each with its own rate 
of vibration. In advanced Photography, science is fur- 
nishing proof that thought and emotion express them- 
selves as definite shapes in matter so fine as to be 
invisible to the physical eye. In Psychology, science 
recognizes the Self as the builder and ruler of its 
bodies. Other sciences are taking advanced steps. 
Let us gather together these already established facts 
and correlate with them the facts of healing, facts of 



8 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

differing bodies and types, facts of all the known laws 
of Nature, including the great fact of Evolution, and 
thus help to make ready for the next step forward in 
medical progress. Reasonably, when the etheric and 
desire-emotion and mental bodies of human beings 
become disordered, each must have its own specialized 
form of treatment. Should we not study carefully all 
the bodies before attempting to treat the apparently 
physical ailments which may be directly traceable to 
a disabling of one of the finer bodies? 

The evolution of the atomic theory furnishes an 
illustration of the urgent necessity at this time for a 
more liberal attitude of mind toward the inevitable 
changes in the Science of Therapeutics. The theory 
of atoms was supposedly complete ; the chemical atom 
was, by the Western world, accepted as a finality in 
atoms. But facts relating to atoms were from time 
to time found which were not accounted for under 
that theory, and through further research in Nature's 
secret, occult storehouse, a still more ultimate atom 
has been discovered, which consists of infinitely finer 
matter and powers and possibilities, and the chemical 
atom has been — not blotted off the register, but — 
relegated to its proper place as a very fine molecule. 
The real science of atoms has been advanced im- 
measurably, but who can now say when the ultimate 
atom will be found? 

So of the Health law. The knowledge of it is but 
fragmentary. The many unclassified facts of healing 
can reasonably be hypothetically viewed as expressions 
of certain unknown, or but dimly glimpsed, potentials 
existing within the sphere of Health. These facts 



FOREWORD 9 

cannot be suppressed, therefore their source should be 
found at whatever cost to long-time cherished views. 

In very ancient days, India had a graded system of 
healing, adjusted to meet the needs of the various 
types of bodies. It gave to the younger in evolution 
the crude drugs, while for those much more advanced 
other remedies than drugs were used. Today, the 
swift, resistless onward sweep of the new cycle of 
evolution forces Therapeutics beyond the study of 
remedies for the bodies of the less evolved alone, and 
necessitates an understanding and control of such of 
the hidden potential powers of the Health law as will 
apply to the more advanced in evolution also. 

The modern mind, with its ready acceptance of the 
law of evolution, and of the continuity of life, is be- 
ginning to glimpse the fact that a profound philosophy 
underlies the healing power ; that there may be grades 
above grades of studies in human needs in health and 
healing ; and that the gross and etheric matters of the 
physical body, and the still subtler matter of the emo- 
tion and concrete mind bodies, must not be treated as 
one undifferentiated mass of matter, but that their 
differing rates of vibration shall be as definitely cal- 
culated and given due place in treatment, as would be 
done in a corresponding problem in physics. 

In the few cases selected for illustration, no attempt 
to prove their truth will be made, though that is known. 
They are given only as examples of well-known facts, 
in and through which we may hope to find some ex- 
planation of the occult processes of the Health law. 
In what is set forth in the following pages, we have 
drawn freely from the literature of all lands, believing 



IO PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

that we should not limit ourselves in our search for 
truth. 

The Theosophical Society is not responsible for any 
statements contained herein. 



The Principles of Occult Healing 



CHAPTER I 

OCCULT HEALING AND OCCULTISM 

The Healing Art, as understood by medical prac- 
titioners today, may be defined in terms of Occultism 
as Physical Occultism. It directs its attention to 
physical results only, ignoring the hidden causes. The 
greater Occultism, the knowledge of the Soul, of the 
Self, of the continual action and reaction between Self 
and the body, has no place in its curriculum. This 
condition cannot long continue, for it is becoming 
known even to the masses that all healing is occult, 
hidden; that its source is not in the doctor nor the 
drug. 

In order to understand the term Occult Healing we 
must know its source and something of its relation to 
the great Principles of Occultism. 

As defined by Madame H. P. Blavatsky, Occultism 
is "The study of the Divine Mind in Nature." 

Many records of such study are to be found in the 
Principles of Eastern Occultism, set forth by great 
Sages thousands of years ago. Within the last cen- 
tury some of these occult records have been translated 
into the languages of the Western world, and are found 
to throw much light upon the Western investigations 

ii 



12 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

into Chemistry, Physiology, Psychology, Medicine, 
Physics, Astronomy, and other scientific studies. Sir 
Oliver Lodge, who holds high rank in the scientific 
world, states that modern science appears to be redis- 
covering some of the discoveries of the ancient scien- 
tists, which have long been lost sight of and forgotten. 

The principles of medicine, as known to the ancients, 
are illuminating to those especially interested in estab- 
lishing health instead of disease, and in maintaining 
it when secured. Certain definite Occult Principles 
are found to underlie all the phenomena of Health 
and Healing. These include the Constitution of Man, 
his origin, his stage in evolution, and his ultimate goal, 
all of which have direct bearing upon Health. 

Very briefly stated, the Principles of Occultism 
which relate to Health and Healing, so far as our 
research has extended, are these : Coming forth from 
the Unthinkable, is the One Only Creative Cause, 
Creator of Nature and Nature's Laws, who is insepar- 
ably united with all that He brings out into manifesta- 
tion. Of Himself He says: "Having pervaded this 
whole universe with a portion of Myself, I remain."* 

His plan for His worlds includes two great factors, 
both of which must be recognized as basic factors in 
all healing. They are: First, Life, Consciousness, 
pervading and informing all forms; and, second, the 
differing grades or planes of spirit-matter in and 
through which consciousness must work. 

In order that these two, Life and Matter, shall reach 
the perfection of His purpose for them, He has laid 
down the law of Evolution, which makes every atom 

* Bhagavad Gita, X, 42. 



OCCULT HEALING AND OCCULTISM 13 

and every entity unfold and use its powers. Occultism, 
taking into consideration the origin of both conscious- 
ness and matter, shows their purposeful relation to 
each other : Consciousness, as individualized Souls or 
Selves, unfolding by means of experiences in matter; 
Matter evolving finer qualities and greater responsive- 
ness as consciousness uses it. 

The origination of the Monads, the Units of Con- 
sciousness — who are our potential selves — is within the 
Divine Life. "The myriads of such Units who are 
to be developed in that coming universe, are generated 
within the Divine Life as germ-cells in organisms, 
before the field for their evolution is formed."* 
These myriads of Monads are sparks, fragments of 
Himself, thought into separation as individual entities, 
who are to become self-moving, self-determining, self- 
knowing. But, until the Solar System has been built, 
they must wait without vehicles or bodies in which they 
can unfold and express themselves. (It is well to note 
that the difference in individuals is here shown to be 
not superficial, but basic.) 

The Logos of a System, selecting His spot in space 
and encircling it for His definite work, breathes — we 
use that word for lack of a better expression — breathes 
something of His own Life into the pre-existing matter 
in it, and all the matter of His system thus becomes 
charged with His own Life-breath energies. For this 
reason the types of matter which Science is investi- 
gating today are found to have life and energy and 
stability combined in their minutest particles ; for this 
reason occultists call all grades of matter spirit-matter. 

* A Study in Consciousness, by Annie Besant, p. 13. 



14 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

In Occultism it is stated that the spirit-matter of 
this system is divided into seven distinct grades, planes 
or states, each with its own atomic level, and each with 
its fixed rate of vibration. From above down, the 
matter of each plane is graded into seven types — 
atomic, sub-atomic, super-etheric, etheric, gaseous, 
liquid, solid. Another enumeration, from below up- 
wards, shows the relation of the seven types of matter 
to consciousness, as : physical matter, emotional matter, 
mental matter, intuitional matter, and the three higher 
grades known under the general term spiritual. 

All of these seven types inhere in each human body, 
interpenetrating but not intermingling. The finer mat- 
ter remains inactive until the Ego — which is the spe- 
cialized channel for the power or the informing ray for 
the Monad on the lower planes — has gained much 
control over the lower types in his bodies. The more 
highly evolved of humanity are using the matter of the 
five lower planes. But mankind generally is using, 
and that but partially, the matter of the three lowest, 
the mental, the emotional or astral and the physical 
planes, and gradually building by thought a mental 
body out of the matter of the mental plane, by desire 
and emotion a body out of astral matter, while etheric 
and physical matter form the outer body. Disease 
expresses itself in the matter of these three lower 
planes, but medical science takes no heed of the types 
of matter involved, nor does it recognize the differing 
needs in treatment; and therefore it fails to find the 
true causes of disease and the permanent remedy. 

Occultism states that while each monad embodies 
within itself the three attributes of divine conscious- 



OCCULT HEALING AND OCCULTISM 1 5 

ness — Will, Wisdom and Activity — these are for great 
periods of time merely potential, as is the oak in the 
acorn, and must be slowly unfolded by evolution 
through long ages. When each monad has attained 
to the utmost of its powers, it has become like the 
Logos Himself, free, creative, full of wisdom, very 
god. But it is the law that each shall develop by 
means of its varied experiences in matter; just so far 
as the monad can gain control of and refine the matter 
of its bodies, in just so much can it show forth to the 
world its divine powers. This, the real Man, is never 
sick ; but is free, and not confined to any one of his 
bodies. Disease appears only in the matter of the three 
lower bodies ; therefore, the better we understand, pro- 
tect and control them, the freer will they be from 
disease. 

The Occult Scriptures say that the Great Architect 
brought forth with Him hosts of Shining Ones, Build- 
ers, Rulers, Lords of the Elements, who had worked 
with Him in previous evolutions, and to them He en- 
trusted His plans for building and supporting His 
worlds. It is these Shining Ones, Devas, Angels, who 
maintain balance in the Cosmos, who restore equi- 
librium when the desire nature of man has filled the 
world with selfish greed, and who guide all evolution 
in the inner and the outer worlds. They are the min- 
isters of God, living Intelligences, ever at work 
through Nature, unceasingly aiding in evolution. 

Occultism explains the wonderful complexity of 
human bodies, and places before us a far broader view 
of Health and Healing than at present known. Rea- 
sonably all Health is occult ; all Healing is occult ; for 



l6 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

while the remedies used and the results secured are 
known, the hidden processes of healing, the initial fac- 
tors in the entrance of disease and the various intelli- 
gent agencies which exercise their selective, distribu- 
tive and assimilative powers and know how and where 
to use them, are not seen by the ordinary physical 
vision. The real processes of health and healing are 
occult, hidden, until such time as finer organs of vision 
are built by those who will to make the effort. 

Humanity, every member of it, must be looked at 
from several standpoints, if we would understand the 
problems of healing. We need to recognize the divine 
origin of Life and Form, and to understand that the 
great law of evolution, together with its sister law, 
that " whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap/' are forcing each human being irresistibly on- 
ward through pain and sorrow to a first-hand knowl- 
edge of his divine source and powers. Mankind needs 
to acknowledge with gratitude the debt it owes to the 
Shining Ones who distribute health and healing Life 
through the forms ; it must learn to look upon matter 
as a graded, living substance, endowed with qualities 
which must be taken into consideration in every case 
of healing. And never to be lost sight of, is the great 
occult fact that each ego must learn, is learning — in 
some cases has learned — to select the higher grades of 
matter for its bodies, matter which does not respond 
to discord and disease. 

How can it be proved that these statements are facts 
and therefore worthy of earnest study? 

The methods of the occultist are identical with 
those of the scientist; but the Western scientist re- 



OCCULT HEALING AND OCCULTISM 17 

stricts himself to the use of physical instruments for 
his investigations, and his researches are confined to 
the investigation of solids, liquids and gases and 
theoretical studies in ether, all belonging to the matter 
of the physical plane. The occultist, on the other 
hand, is not limited to physical instruments alone, nor 
are his studies confined to the denser forms of matter. 

The occultist realizes that sense-organs must be 
built out of each type of matter, for each and every 
sense-organ responds only to the vibratory power in 
its own kind of matter. As man, through long ages 
of evolution has built for himself physical sense- 
organs in and of physical matter, so now, if he would 
investigate matter that is finer than the dense physical, 
he must build a set of finer sense-organs into the finer 
matter of his own bodies. 

This need not be a long process, for now, by "using 
the knowledge gained by observation of natural laws, 
by eliminating all obstacles, by working with Nature, 
utilizing all favorable conditions/' these new sense- 
organs can be built within a few years instead of 
through a long evolution. Many professional men and 
women are today unconsciously working at this build- 
ing. Each deeply earnest effort to solve the problems 
which disease presents, is another step toward acquir- 
ing the new sense-organs; for physical vision having 
reached its limit, the consciousness attempts to solve 
the problem by means of, or through the medium of, 
intuitional-matter, instead of physical. This is a pre- 
paratory step toward opening up new sense-organs in 
the finer types of matter in the body. 

This extension of sense-power is known as clair- 



l8 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

voyance, clear-seeing. There are two distinct divisions 
or classifications of this power; the lower, and the 
higher clairvoyance. 

The lower, that exemplified in ordinary mediumship, 
and frequently observed in animals, has its chief ex- 
pression through the sympathetic nerve centers. It 
may or may not be accurate, for the reading cannot 
be confirmed by the brain consciousness of the observer. 

The higher clairvoyance, however, is the result of 
definite, purposeful training of the finer bodies and 
sense-organs, through which the Self, the conscious- 
ness, looks at events, past, present and future, from a 
higher standpoint. Whoever seeks to use this higher 
clairvoyance must eliminate pride, cupidity and igno- 
rance, for they are fatal to the attainment of this true 
expression of consciousness. 

As we unfold our points of view in the following 
chapters, it will, we hope, be seen that a recognition 
of the Life side of Nature, as well as a research into 
both super- and sub-types of spirit-matter is all impor- 
tant in the understanding of the occult, the hidden side 
of Health. 



CHAPTER II 

OCCULT HEALING SCHOOLS 

It should be said, before we enter into the details 
of our subject, that we are not dealing with an ex- 
traneous growth which is now attempting to attach 
itself to the superstructure of Therapeutics. Instead, 
we find that the principles of Occult Healing are part 
of the very foundations of the earliest systems of 
Healing. 

The Western world has no theory concerning the 
origin of Health and Disease, but a very definite one 
is set forth in the therapeutical books of the East. 
In the Ayurveda, one of the great medical scriptures 
of ancient India, it is stated that the knowledge of 
perfect Health, or the Science of Life, was taught 
by Brahma, the Creator, to the inhabitants of the 
highest heaven realms, the Celestial Devas or Arch- 
angels. 

The Celestial gods communicated the Science of 
Health received by them from Brahma, to Indra, the 
next lower in rank to themselves, for they were bound 
by the ancient law governing the imparting of knowl- 
edge, which required that when one had been taught 
a science he must teach it to another ; otherwise he 
committed a far-reaching sin. Indra was the chief of 
the gods whose home was in the next lower realm or 

19 



20* PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

plane, and he should have taught the science to the 
lesser gods of his realm, who would have guarded the 
health of the people by passing on the knowledge to 
them. But he failed to perform this sacred duty. He 
kept the knowledge to himself and, as a result, instead 
of the universal Health which had till then prevailed, 
decrepitude and diseases of divers kinds, and shortness 
of life, began to afflict mankind. 

Discovering his fatal error too late for the pro- 
tection of the people, Indra determined that the science 
should not be wholly lost to mankind. He called to- 
gether some wise men who, through austerity and 
self-control, through vows, gifts, study, meditation and 
the practice of universal compassion, had earned the 
right to be taught the laws of Perfect Health — "This 
most sacred of all sciences, which promotes longevity, 
which prevents the effects of decrepitude and disease, 
which infuses strength, which is as nectar itself, which 
is most beneficial to all beings, which affords protec- 
tion to the afflicted, and which is wholly unsectarian 
as regards its doctrines." 

To these wise men Indra delivered the true science 
of Life and Health, and from their works and those 
of their pupils to whom they passed on the ancient 
knowledge, have come down through the ages many 
stories of instantaneous healings, now termed miracles. 

Glimpses of what these truths may have been will 
be found in the records of the Occult Healing Schools 
of the ancient East, where the hidden side of Nature 
in all its phases was earnestly studied. Not only did 
they teach the mysteries concerning the movements of 
planets and their influence upon the elements of matter 



OCCULT HEALING SCHOOLS 21 

in all bodies, and the evolution of the Deva or Angel 
kingdom and its relation to the human kingdom, but 
they penetrated into the sacred mysteries of Life itself. 

The instantaneous restoration from disease and 
death to health, which characterized the highest heal- 
ing in those most ancient records, is found to be char- 
acteristic also of the later schools of the Therapeutse 
and their earnest students. According to Philo, a 
learned writer of the first century a.d.,* there had 
existed for many centuries before that date communi- 
ties called Essenes, very learned bodies of students, 
whose chief characteristics were love of God, love of 
virtue, and love of mankind; and their methods of 
demonstrating these virtues made them greatly be- 
loved. Within this outer body was an inner School 
called the Therapeutae, or wisdom-lovers, who devoted 
themselves to the study of the super- and sub-physical 
Nature, and to the understanding of the highest ele- 
ments of health for both souls and bodies. 

They claimed that by means of these studies they 
obtained an art of healing superior to the ordinary; 
by constant study of Nature, of Nature's administra- 
tors, the devas, and the union in the One Self, they 
developed the intuition which enabled them to directly 
know the nature of pure souls and to be able to under- 
stand and use the powers inherent in the essence of 
matter, and also to know the causes of disease. One 
aim of the Therapeutae was to attain to such a state 
of holiness as to be able to perform instantaneous 
cures. Only those who, by complete purity of mind 
and body, and by fullest love and compassion had 

# Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by G. R. S. Mead. p. 66. 



22 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

reached the highest grade in the Schools, were able 
to bring the dead to life. 

To these Essenes were attached outer circles of 
pupils living in the world, who were in training for 
the higher grades of healing, and from these schools 
were sent out from time to time small bodies of 
colonizers into different countries. They established 
therapeutical schools in Egypt and Greece. According 
to one author* Moses of the Old Testament and 
Aaron his brother were initiated into the Therapeutae 
of Egypt, and were profoundly versed in the 
mysteries. 

In the far-famed school of Pythagoras, 600 B.C., 
the pupils were required to have great knowledge of 
Mathematics and Music, preparatory to admission, and 
also extreme purity of life; the idea being not to make 
a saint of a man, but that he, having become a saint, 
with a pure mind and a pure body, and great power of 
love and knowledge, was permitted to enter the school 
in order to unfold fully within himself his own God- 
power, the Divine Life. Pythagoras, who had spent 
years of his life in India, where such schools had 
existed since the beginning of the Aryan Race, taught 
the art of highest healing not only of the physical 
body, but psychological or soul healing, showing that 
super-physical health needs existed, which the phy- 
sician must meet and relieve. In his Golden Verses 
he says : "The race of Man is divine. Sacred Nature 
reveals to them the most hidden mysteries. If she 
impart to thee her secrets, thou wilt easily perform all 

* Historie des Sectes Religieuse, by Gregoire (Abbe), Yol. 
II, p. 292. 



OCCULT HEALING SCHOOLS 23 

the things which I have ordained thee. And by the 
healing of thy soul, thou wilt deliver it from all evils, 
from all afflictions. " 

It is said that it was in one of these Essenic schools 
that Jesus was trained, a lad whose pure body and pure 
soul and tender sympathy for the suffering made Him 
a channel for the highest wisdom, and enabled Him 
to offer to the Supreme World-Teacher, the Christ of 
the Western World, the Shri Krishna of India, a 
body which could be made a perfect exemplar of the 
power to instantly heal all manner of disease and 
restore the dead to life. 

In the Pistis Sophia, one of the most occult of the 
early Christian Mystery teachings, given after the 
resurrection, we read that the Master said : "The rest 
of the Mysteries which have been committed to the 
pupils, may be given to others, except the mystery of 
the resurrection of the dead, and the healing of the 
blind, for that mystery pertaineth to the Rulers, " or 
highest order of healers. 

In one of these records of the past is a statement 
concerning Apollonius of Tyana, that illustrates the 
power with which such purity, such super-knowledge 
endows its possessor. Apollonius in his conversation 
with the Babylonian monarch, Vardan, said that he 
himself was a physician of the soul, and could free 
the king from the diseases of his mind, not only be- 
cause he knew what ought to be done according to 
the discipline in the Pythagorean schools, but also 
because he knew the nature of the king.* This wis- 
dom was his through his having unfolded the divinity 

* Apollonius of Tyana, by G. E. S. Mead, p. 113. 



24 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

of his whole nature, thus making possible a perpetual 
state of intuitional clear-seeing of hidden things. 

It is a matter of history that Apollonius broke up 
the plague which was raging at Ephesus, by pointing 
out the ca^use of it and ordering the cause to be 
removed; also that he demonstrated his power to 
restore the dead to life. 

Hippocrates (about 450 B.C.), the Father of Modern 
Medicine, so-called, held both in his teachings and his 
practice that there existed a restoring essence in nature, 
penetrating through all creation ; that this intelligence 
is the agent which is constantly striving to preserve all 
things in their natural state, and to restore them when 
they are disarranged, and that in the observation, 
understanding, and management of this vis medicatrix 
nature?, the art of the true physician consisted.* 

Menanderf was especially famed for his healing 
schools in Samaria. His teachings were on Psycho- 
logical lines ; he taught of the seven creative powers of 
Nature and their Rulers, and the ways whereby these 
planetary powers could be subjected to the purified, 
compassionate will. 

A century later Hippolytus writes of the healing 
schools of the Ophites, in which the symbol of the 
serpent was a marked feature. For the serpent as a 
symbol of the Health Intelligence played a great part 
in the mysteries of the wisdom and healing schools in 
Greece, Egypt and Phoenicia, and can be traced back 
to Syria, Babylonia and further east to India. 

An ascetic sect of Jews existed in the first century 

* Fathers of Biology, by C. McKae, M.A., F.L.S., p. 9. 

t Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by G. E. S. Mead, p. 175. 



OCCULT HEALING SCHOOLS 2$ 

after Christ, of whom Milna speaks as the ancestors 
of the Christian monks and hermits. They resided 
near Alexandria in Egypt, and bore a striking re- 
semblance in their doctrines of purity, health and 
compassion for humanity, to the Essenes. Their sys- 
tem of healing pervades some of the high degrees of 
Masonry. 

The great physician, Galen, born 131 a.d., in Asia 
Minor, looked upon Nature, including planetary intel- 
ligences and influences, as the prime mover of every- 
thing, and upon the physician as one of the chief 
human administrators of the powers of these planets. 
He taught the existence of an occult intelligence, hid- 
den in nature, which heals.* 

Paracelsus, born in 1492 in Switzerland, was the 
most noted physician of his own time, holding high 
civic offices, consulted by royalty, teacher in the Uni- 
versities. Considered in the light of present day 
materialism, it is not strange that his teachings should 
have been gradually discarded by physicians for the 
less mentally laborious use of patent remedies. He 
says: "I have discovered a great many secrets in 
Nature, and I will tell you that he only can be a true 
physician w T ho has acquired the knowledge of this 
healing essence, and the power to use it. This Intelli- 
gence, being an emanation of the spiritual Life, con- 
tains the elements of all cosmic influences, and is 
therefore the cause by which the action of the stars, 
the cosmic intelligences, upon the etheric and astral 
bodies of man may be explained." 

These high orders of Therapeutae have not wholly 

* Medical Portrait Gallery, by F. J. Pettigrew, F.R.S. 



26 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

disappeared. They work in silence, for the benefit 
of humanity, with a knowledge the depth and beauty 
of which the profane world cannot conceive. Under 
their guidance, brotherhoods of healers are forming in 
different countries. 

It is only too apparent that the requirements of 
pure body, pure mind, an intimate knowledge of the 
true healing power in nature, and a profound com- 
passion for humanity, are no longer required in the 
medical schools of today. As a consequence, only the 
lower grades of healing are recognized by, taught to 
or practiced by the medical profession. But if evolu- 
tion be true, some of those highly trained souls of the 
past may soon return to earth and re-establish the 
higher grades once more. Indeed, the greatest healer 
of the present historic age, the Lord Maitreya of 
India, the Christ of the Western world, may well 
return and perform those greater world-healings of 
which two thousand years ago He said He could not 
"because of their unbelief. " For, with the power and 
the methods better understood by the people, and with 
the scientific demonstrations of it under Nature's own 
law of Health, unbelief will speedily be supplanted by 
knowledge. 



CHAPTER III 

HEALTH AND THE HEALING INTELLIGENCE 

"There is no miracle." Everything that occurs is 
the result of eternal, immutable, ever-active law. 
This is one of the Principles of Occultism, and it has 
an especial bearing on our study of Health and Heal- 
ing. There is no case of healing which is outside of 
the law. The true explanation of every case is to be 
found under Nature's laws, if we will look for it in 
the right way. 

Health may be imperfectly described as one aspect 
of spirit, of all-pervading Life itself; it is a normal, 
inherent power and possibility of all Life in Nature. 
It may be said to be a law of the great Creator for 
all things in manifestation, for every "I am" con- 
sciousness, for every energy, for all matter whether 
individualized or collective, and in itself seems to be 
the perfection of blissful equilibrium and oneness* 
Health is, therefore, spiritual in its source, and cannot 
separate from its own nature, nor identify itself with 
that which is not of the same rate of vibration as 
itself. (The Psychology of the Life side of Nature has 
not, in the Western world, been made objective in 
terms of language, and therefore words fail to express 
the fullness of this Reality.) 

Now, w r e assume that Health manifests as a law of 
Nature; that it expresses itself as a law, not of com- 

27 



28 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

mand to act in a particular way, but of conditions 
under which actions of any kind can be done. Laws 
of Nature state the conditions under which certain 
results invariably follow. Water boils at ioo° C. 
under normal atmospheric pressure. If boiling water 
is desired at a higher altitude, the conditions con- 
nected with pressure must be accurately followed. 
Health, like the other laws of Nature of which we 
know, seems to abide or remain as an eternal verity, 
unchanging, inviolable. From our limited viewpoint, 
it seems to contain within itself many potential powers ; 
one of these is the power of abiding, so to say, at 
every closed point in matter until a channel is made; 
another is the power of extending or being extended 
into and through any channel open for its outflowing. 
Health expresses itself by means of the Life side of 
everything; in this it differs from disease, which 
expresses itself through or in matter. Eternally pres- 
ent as its polar opposite and thus making it possible 
for Health to manifest, is disease; for Nature mani- 
fests by means of pairs of opposites such as Health- 
Disease; positive-negative; light-darkness; life-form. 
Neither can manifest without its polar opposite. 

Disease in general terms may be defined as a con- 
dition of discord in the matter of the bodies which Life 
uses. It is disharmony in matter; it is disintegrating 
in its action, preventing the free flow of Life through 
the parts, and is full of pain or non-bliss. It is a 
condition of disturbance of equilibrium of the energies 
in matter, is unstable, impermanent, liable always to 
rearrangement and readjustment, either by the death 
of the body or by the restoration of the energies to 



HEALTH AND THE HEALING INTELLIGENCE 29 

harmonious action. Disease has no place in Health 
harmonies and cannot attach itself to Health. With 
no connecting link, these extremes cannot approach 
each toward the other. 

How then, in view of this permanent oppositeness, 
can one take the place of, or supplant the other? 
Only by means of a third factor, which we will find 
in the study of Occultism. Health, by right of its own 
divine Life nature, abides potentially — latent as possi- 
bility only — in every atom of matter, in all bodies ; 
but it comes out into manifestation through a medi- 
ator, which is formed of mighty Intelligences, living, 
active entities administering the great Law of Health. 

If Health remains potential in the atoms of the form, 
if it is inactive, or having become active is, by con- 
ditions, forced back into potentiality again, then dis- 
ease — disharmony, unequilibrium — may become domi- 
nant, positive, and establish itself as ruler. But if the 
healing Intelligence can dominate for a time and a 
channel can be opened through the etheric (atomic) 
matter of a diseased body which will make an inlet 
for the abiding, waiting Health Life, in sufficient quan- 
tity to overcome and drive out the unstable vibrations 
and establish its own blissful equilibrium, then disease 
is no longer active there. Health becomes the positive 
factor, and Disease the negative or potential. 

This Healing Intelligence, this distributing agency 
in substituting health for disease, is an occult, a hidden, 
a polarized living Force, composed of intelligent enti- 
ties or classes of angels, who, according to Iamblichus, 
the great occultist of the Fourth century a.d., are the 
intermediaries, the conveyors of all good from God to 



3D PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

mankind. It is they who prepare the soul to receive 
truth, health and all good.* They can do this because 
they are consciously united with their source. As the 
Western Scriptres phrase it: "Their angels do 
always behold the face of my Father which is in 
Heaven/'f 

We differentiate, then, between Health and the 
Healing Intelligence, assuming that it is reasonable that 
Health is an Eternal Spiritual Law with its source in 
the great Architect of Nature ; while its outer expres- 
sion in this world and these bodies of ours, is made pos- 
sible by the Healing Intelligence, which is to some de- 
gree analyzable and understandable. This Intelligence 
should be studied by all healers, for according to all the 
ancient Scriptures, it is the true channel for the 
Health-Life. 

* Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans 
and Assyrians. Thomas Taylor's translation. 
t St. Matt., XVIII, 10. 



CHAPTER IV 

ALL HEALING IS OCCULT 

It is well to get a clear intellectual conception of these 
invisible agencies in healing. We can then realize that 
there is no miracle in any case. Whether the healing 
is ascribed to Christ, to God, to Nature, to drugs, to 
prayer, or other sources, this healing Intelligence be- 
comes a basis for every assumption. 

The world-Scriptures confirm the existence of this 
Healing Intelligence and describe, with more or less 
detail, an occult Hierarchy of invisible workers, known 
in the East as Devas, or Shining Ones, and in the 
West as Angels and Ministering Spirits. 

They have many names and powers and functions, 
and are of many degrees. Some of the lower classes 
answer men's prayers for material things. It is said 
in the Hindu Scriptures : "They who long after suc- 
cess in action on earth, worship the Shining Ones."* 
"But the spiritual man does not worship them, for 
they aid but in worldly success."f By recognition of, 
and gratitude to these invisible workers is fulfilled the 
scriptural injunction: "With this nourish ye the 
Shining Ones, and may the Shining Ones nourish 

*Bhavagad Gita, IV, 12. 

t Universal Text Book of Religions and Morals, Annie Besant, 
p. 66. 

31 



$2 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

you ; thus nourishing one another, ye shall reap the 
supremest good.'"* Many classes of these shining Ones 
are spoken of in sacred Hindu literature. 

In the Christian Church three great classes of angels 
are recognized, and these are subdivided into nine 
groups : I, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones ; II, Do- 
minions, Virtues, Powers; III, Principalities, Arch- 
angels, Angels. The Principalities are the Angel 
Guardians of Nations and States, while the Angels 
are specially concerned with man. In the Christian 
Bible one method of healing by them is thus described : 
"For an angel went down at a certain season into the 
pool (Bethesda) and troubled the water; whosoever 
then first after the troubling of the water stepped in 
was made whole of whatever disease he had."f 

The Zoroastrian recognizes seven Ruling Arch- 
angels, "who further the world at will, so that it does 
not grow old and die, does not become corrupt and 
stinking but ever-living/^ Under each of these seven 
are vast hosts of angels, including the sub-human 
Farohars or nature-spirits, whom so many people now 
feel and see sporting in woods and streams and air. 

Islam speaks of the four great Archangels, and of 
the two recording angels attached to every human 
being. These angels are described as having pure 
and subtle bodies created of a subtle, fiery substance 
(corresponding to what is known in the West as 
radio-active, etheric, or halo-matter). It also de- 
scribes the inferior intelligences (our sub-human class 

* Bhagavad Gita, in, 11. 

t St. John, V, 4. 

t Zamyad Yasht, Frag. Ill, 15. 



ALL HEALING IS OCCULT 33 

of nature-spirits), who are related to the five elements, 
earth, water, fire, air, ether; they are created by fire, 
some good, some bad. "There are some of us (genii) 
who are upright, and there are some of us who are 
otherwise ; we are of different ways/'* 

Buddhism teaches that "the Disciple will overcome 
the earth and the world of Death, and the world of 
the Shining Ones."f "Speak the truth; do not yield 
to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these 
three steps thou wilt go near to the Shining Ones." 

In ancient days these angels walked with and were 
seen and known of men. But although their work is 
still continued they have largely withdrawn from phys- 
ical knowledge. They constitute a line of evolution 
quite distinct from the human line, and yet very closely 
associated with it, for to it belong the Rulers of plane- 
tary systems, with their myriads of ministering hosts ; 
architects of the kingdoms of Nature; Recorders in 
the Book of human lives; the Lords of the Elements, 
each with his vast hosts, respectively, of Sylphs, Sala- 
manders, Undines, Gnomes. 

In these inner worlds reside the Builders, fashioning 
according to the patterns given them all the kingdoms 
of nature. Every form in the mineral, vegetable, ani- 
mal and human kingdoms is carefully built up in 
etheric matter by Nature's invisible artists, before it 
is given its outer physical form. 

Here, also, in their own inner realms, are the Divine 
Christs of past and present religions, the great Manus 
or Rulers who, having a plan laid out before them, 

* Al Quran, lxxii, 6-14. 

t Udanavarga, 43, 224; Dharmapada, II, 30. 



34 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

bring out a vast Root Race and remain with it until its 
ending. These are they whom we, from our stand- 
point in human evolution, call perfected beings, the 
Masters, who by self-sacrifice guide the destinies of 
nations, and aid mankind in reaching higher stages of 
evolution. 

In every specialized field of these Shining Ones 
there are great Rulers ; even the control of the storage- 
houses of diseases may be traced to them. There is 
Karkati, who holds within herself the cholera microbe, 
and sends these living needles of consuming fire forth 
into the bodies of those who by insanitary or vicious 
lives have a lesson to learn by this manner of death.* 
And again, Duhsaha-Yakshmi, who through her hosts 
of helpers deals out to countless thousands the con- 
sumption-bacillus ; their work made possible and nec- 
essary by the corruption of the emotional and mental 
atmosphere of the uncontrolled masses through over- 
indulgence of their lower natures. f Looked at from 
the standpoint of the Shining Ones, how utterly futile 
must seem the efforts of today permanently to eradi- 
cate these diseases by introducing more germs into the 
bodies. The causes are in the immoral and unmoral 
conditions of humanity now, and these must be reme- 
died before disease can be fully overcome. 

Of quite individual interest is the class of Shining 
Ones known as guardian angels. There is scarcely a 
man or woman of intelligence who has not at some 
time sensed an unseen power for the moment saving 
from danger, or leading to some place or person 

* Yoga Vasishta (Laghu), p. 62. 

t The Science of Social Organization, Bhagavan Das, p. 77. 



ALL HEALING IS OCCULT 35 

vitally necessary, or guiding into some line of action 
where unexpected results have occurred, and who has 
not definitely recognized the aid as from a super- or 
sub-human agency. In many minds there is a dawning 
recognition of the watchful care of each individual 
by intelligences, seldom seen but often felt, and but 
for whose intervention the danger or difficulty could 
not have been averted. 

In all quiet country places, among the woods and 
flowers, upon the mountain and out at sea, there are 
constantly at work what are termed nature-spirits, 
nature-builders. It is the same Divine Life, the Life 
of God Himself, but differentiating in manifestation. 
Their line of evolution also runs parallel to the human 
and does not merge. These entities throng the earth, 
populate the enormous planes of the sea,, the fields of 
the air and the ethers. Their bodies are made of the 
physical ethers. "This etheric matter is not under 
ordinary conditions visible to physical eyes, so that 
when they are seen one of two things must take place ; 
either they must materialize themselves by drawing 
round them a veil of physical matter, or else the spec- 
tator must experience an increase of sensitiveness 
which enables him to respond to the wave-lengths of 
the higher ethers, and to see what is not normally 
perceptible to him."* 

These nature-spirits are a class of invisible workers 
most active in the service of nature and of man. Their 
bodies, being etheric, are not diseased, and cannot be 
torn or injured; they have no pain, no fear; they are 

* The Hidden Side of Things, by C. W. Leadbeater, Vol. I, 
p. 119. 



36 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

the cosmic agents of nature, being the life side of the 
five elements, ether, air, fire, water, earth, and each 
class uses its own special element in doing its work. 

If the observer has a responsive sympathy, and a 
real love for nature, he will see these little builders 
buzzing around or looking quietly from within the 
heart of the unfolding flower. The higher types with- 
draw themselves from people whose radiations are full 
of anger, greed, cruelty, or lust, but to clean sensitive 
natures they are very responsive. They minister oc- 
casionally to humanity, and Madame Blavatsky has 
said that they officiate as intermediate agents between 
the devas and men. We are told that if we render 
them gratitude for what they do for us, their evolution 
is advanced, as by this gratitude they are nourished, 
and can carry help to others. 

More and more as humanity progresses in the devel- 
oping, training and control of the powers of the desire 
and thought bodies do its more advanced members 
become in more or less degree helpers on the invisible 
planes. Consciousness, the "I am that Self/' never 
sleeps, so when it withdraws from the physical body 
during sleep, it carries on the work of evolution in its 
more or less developed finer bodies. And to the degree 
that physical consciousness can be reached by cry of 
pain, by sight of suffering, by call for help, to the 
same degree will the consciousness working in the 
finer bodies while the physical sleeps be aware of the 
opportunities of service. Many a remarkable cure has 
thus been accomplished. Such helpers can we all be, 
to both the living and the so-called dead. In fact, 
many a mother, who has laid off her physical body 



ALL HEALING IS OCCULT 37 

either temporarily in sleep or in death, remains near 
her children, guiding and helping them. 

The practice of the healing art has in the history 
of all ages and races been accompanied by religious 
ceremonies. Until comparatively recent times the 
priest has been the physician for both soul and body, 
but since the offices have been separated, Therapeutics 
has failed more and more to fulfil its highest possi- 
bilities, has been unable to meet the needs of large 
numbers of sufferers. The place of ceremonial in 
healing has been lost sight of. These religious cere- 
monies are in reality a call, or a request, or a demand 
upon some special class of the deva kingdom, to aid 
in the cure. 

These unseen helpers are not to be worshipped, but 
gratitude from us is a necessity; and the value of 
their services must be recognized. For, as shown in 
the beginning of this chapter, the work is on a reci- 
procity basis : "Thus nourishing one another, ye shall 
reap the supremest good." 



CHAPTER V 

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE SELF 

In seeking for the Principles on which Occult Heal- 
ing is based, we have so far found : 

(i) That the law of Health — equally with the well- 
known law of Reincarnation and the law of Cause 
and Effect and other laws of Nature — came into exist- 
ence as the Will of the Logos for His System, and 
that its conditions must be met if its permanent bene- 
fits are to be secured. 

(2) That the constitution of mankind is Divine in 
its origin, but it requires ages of time, with many 
incarnations in bodies built of matter, and innumerable 
alternations between sickness and health in the bodies, 
with their awakening results, before the divine in each 
unfolds its powers of Will, Wisdom and Activity, and 
fully assumes control of its own destiny. 

(3) Occultism states that the Great Architect 
brought forth a vast Hierarchy of Shining Ones to 
build His system and to administer His laws, for man- 
kind was too helpless and ignorant to reach without 
assistance its present stage in evolution, nor could the 
worlds have been built and sustained without these 
Shining Ones. They remain and carry on their in- 
visible ministrations until mankind shall have attained 
its divinity. 

38 



THE INDESTRUCTIBLE SELF 39 

To these three Principles must now be added two 
more : The Self, and the powers latent in Matter. 

Of the Self it is said in an ancient Hindu Scripture: 
"As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new 
ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out 
bodies, entereth into others that are new."* This 
"dweller in the body," the Self, the "I am," is the 
one fundamental certainty in the world. It is possible 
for each of us to know that "I am that Self; I am not 
these bodies." The "Self" in me, this self-conscious 
entity, the continuing life, does know that I am I 
under all circumstances of birth, youth, old age, death 
and rebirth. 

This "I am" consciousness is a living spiritual Intel- 
ligence. It never grows old; it is never sick; it does 
not die ; it has no sex ; it cannot be escaped from ; it 
depends on no proof, for to doubt it only proves its 
existence within and through the doubter. 

This "Self" has come down into these different 
types of matter along another line of evolution than 
that of Spirit-Matter, to realize, while still imbedded 
in matter, its own divine source and purpose, and to 
learn to use and build and rule matter, as distinct from 
Itself, that it may in time become a worker in the 
building and guiding of worlds. Each individualized 
Self spends ages of time in learning to govern and 
improve and perfect the matter of its own bodies. The 
physical bodies get old, or fail to respond, or are 
insufficient for the needs of the Self, and with the 
help of the Shining Ones they are laid off, and the 
experience gained by the consciousness is, in the inner 

* Bhagavad Gita, II, 22. 



40 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

worlds between incarnations, assimilated and trans- 
muted into powers and capacities for its future use. 
Then the "I am" returns to earth with the devas' 
help and takes on bodies again for more experience. 
Neither birth nor de&th can take away from this "I 
am" what it learns and stores in its own memory in 
each life, though the bodies it builds are, at the present 
low level of the majority of humanity, able to express 
but little of the knowledge. But by slow degrees, 
involving hundreds of successive re-births, the Self 
builds better bodies and unfolds through them its 
powers of unselfish love and service. 

Through ignorance man, the Self, builds into these 
bodies from time to time much undesirable material. 
Increasing desire, when gratified, brings pain and dis- 
ease to his bodies, and obstruction and pain and dis- 
ease in the bodies in turn bring more knowledge and 
necessary experience to the unfolding Self within. 
This law of Nature (action and reaction) when viewed 
superficially, seems to be evil, but that is only because 
of our ignorance. This law it is which causes the 
mind to discriminate. As the "I am" consciousness 
unfolds, develops, grows, it restrains its bodies, re- 
frains from thinking and feeling and acting in the 
lower, grosser animal instincts, and casts out of 
the bodies such elemental essence as hinders their 
evolution. 

Bodies are chiefly sick because the "I am" conscious- 
ness has been in the past, and still is, ignorant of the 
nature of the material of the bodies it builds and uses. 
In the unwise selection of foods, in the uncontrolled 
tumultuousness in emotion or desire matter, there is 



THE INDESTRUCTIBLE SELF 41 

established in the bodies inharmonious elements and 
what we know as disease follows. To this must be 
added the Karma of the relations with others in the 
present or in past lives, perhaps of injustice, cruelty, 
selfishness, and this, too, must be worked out, or bal- 
anced up, by means of and through the suffering of 
the bodies. 

The study of the Self and its activities becomes 
deeply interesting as we learn more and more of the 
purpose of evolution. The law of Nature that "what 
a man sows that he shall reap/' "what a man thinks 
that he becomes," is as true today as when, hundreds 
of years ago, the Buddha said : "Ho ! all ye that suffer, 
know that ye suffer from yourselves. None else com- 
pels. " With each painful experience in its bodies the 
Self fortifies itself a little more against the repetition 
of such experiences, and, as "Nature abhors a 
vacuum, " when the lower inharmonious matter is thus 
thrown out, a finer type comes in and so the upward 
climbing proceeds. Especially is the growth aided by 
the helping of the suffering with strong love and sym- 
pathy wherever there is need. 

The ancient schools studied this "I am that Self," 
and the essence of Matter, in order that, the Self being 
known and the essential nature of Matter being known, 
its harmonious combinations would become inevitable, 
for the Self, the "I am," the Knower would rule. This 
is illustrated by Porphyry, who, in relating the story 
of Rogatianus, a pupil of Plotinus, said of him that 
though suffering greatly from gout and articular rheu- 
matism, he yet for eight years gave himself up wholly 
to the work of seeking the Divine Self within him. 



42 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

When he had attained to this, he found that his body 
was free from disease. Porphyry records that this is 
perfectly conformable to the Chaldaean Oracle: "By 
extending a fiery (i. e., a divine) intellect to the work 
of piety, you will preserve the flowing body." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE LATENT POWERS IN MATTER 

Obscure and difficult to know as is the Self, still 
more intricate is the study of matter. Today, matter 
is being investigated by many men of science as though 
it consisted of form only. But occultism asserts that 
form is but one-half of an inseparable combination of 
Life and Form, Spirit-Matter. The Secret Doctrine 
claims that every particle of matter in the Universe, 
throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious ; that is, it is 
endowed with a consciousness of its own kind on its 
own plane of perception. In the study of the Healing 
Power we must understand the dual part which spirit- 
matter performs in the healing. We may well give 
thought to the statement of Mrs. Annie Besant, the 
President of the Theosophical Society, who says that 
the relation between consciousness and matter, life 
and form, is magnetic, and the two are not really 
separate but only polarized.* 

It is generally believed that we are on the verge of 
great discoveries concerning matter; but, put briefly, 
it is by Science tentatively stated to be: 

(a) Composed of electrons, which are described as 
probably "knots or twists or vortices, or some sort of 
either static or kinetic modification of the ether of 
space ;"f 

* A Study in Consciousness, by Annie Besant, p. 35. 
t Life and Matter, by Sir Oliver Lodge, p. 15. 

43 



44 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

(b) That matter has various properties, such as 
polarity, radiation, magnetic qualities, odor, taste, etc. 

The occultist, whose trained vision sees the details 
of the life side as well as the form side of atomic work- 
ings, states : That the atomic side of matter, the uni- 
versal ether, is eternal throughout the limitless expanse 
of space, existing from before the time when the 
Logos selected the location for and enclosed within a 
circle, within this space, His Solar System. Into this 
selected area of Virgin Matter He poured an aspect 
of Himself, a life-giving, vitalizing breath which filled 
the pre-existing atomic matter with new powers and 
possibilities of attraction and repulsion, thus polarizing 
every atom. Into this now vitalized atomic matter He 
breathed a second outpouring of Divine Life which 
was of the nature of Monadic or elemental living es- 
sence, with infinite possibilities of molecular adaptation 
and combination and responsiveness to vibration, and 
this living essence became the ensouling, combining 
life in every atom and every molecule. 

This elemental essence is not a homogeneous mass. 
Under a fixed law of nature, each planet in our solar 
system contributes its own type of elemental essence 
to the earth; that is to say, we recognize seven main 
planets in this system and each of the seven planets 
radiates out its own type of essence, each of these seven 
types embodying the principal qualities characteristic 
of its own planetary hierarchy. 

Each planet, also, is pouring out its own higher and 
lower rates of vibration upon our earth, and receiving 
ours in return. This ancient view of planetary inter- 
change of vibrations has recently been corroborated by 



THE LATENT POWERS IN MATTER 45 

an eminent physicist, Professor K. Birkland, who, 
speaking before the Academy of Sciences at Christi- 
ania, Norway, stated that he had found that there is a 
radiation from each planet, and that the electrification 
varies, some planets having greater radiating power, 
some less, that from the sun itself being rated at 
600,000,000 volts. The occultist knows that every 
vibration and every ray is alive with the activities of 
invisible beings and living essence, and that this side 
of matter has to be reckoned with in everything. 

Not alone science, but the popular mind even, is 
looking more or less studiously into the question of 
planetary effects upon health. Mars, the war god, the 
fire element, is recognized as a factor in fevers and all 
inflammations; various mental disorders, even con- 
firmed lunacy, are associated with the moon; cold, 
phlegmatic, obscure diseases, of a chronic nature, are 
traced directly to Saturn's influences. Immunity from 
one or another form of disease is due to there being 
a negligible quantity of that special type of essence in 
that particular human body. 

The elemental essence, whose evolution consists in 
learning to respond to all vibrations, is that strange, 
half-intelligent life which surrounds us in all directions, 
vivifying all the matter of the physical, the astral, and 
the mental planes. All independent groupings of par- 
ticles, all separated forms of every kind, of every 
type, are ensouled by an intelligence, ranging from the 
loftiest Intelligence of the spiritual region to the lowest 
sub-conscious elementals of the physical world, or any 
of the countless hosts that range between. No form 
exists which is not thus ensouled. 



46 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

When one gains even an intellectual conception of 
the possibilities in the evolution of Matter, one can 
test it in many ways. It will explain, for one thing, 
why "thoughts are things," and how every impulse 
sent out by man, whether of feeling or thought, be- 
comes for the time a kind of living creature. A 
thought- form is a mental image, moulded by the mind 
out of the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, 
where the creative faculty of mind works. This form, 
composed of the rapidly vibrating atoms of the matter 
of that region, sets up vibrations all around it, and 
these vibrations, passing outward, thrill out as a sink- 
ing-color in every direction, and call to the thought- 
form the Elementals belonging to that color. 

'The hue of the singing-color depends on the nature 
of the motive inspiring the generator of the thought- 
form. If the motive be pure, loving, beneficent in its 
character, the color produced will summon to the 
thought- form an Elemental, which will take on the 
characteristics impressed on the form by the motive, 
and act along the line thus traced; this Elemental 
enters into the thought-form, playing to it the part of 
a soul, and thus an independent entity is made in the 
astral world, an entity of a beneficent character."* 

If the motive be impure, revengeful, maleficent in its 
character, the color produced by that vibration will 
summon an Elemental which will take on the evil 
characteristics of the thought-form, thus making of it 
an active evil entity. Each human being "peoples his 
current in space with a world of his own, crowded 
with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and 

* Karma, by Annie Besant, p. 15. 



THE LATENT POWERS IN MATTER 47 

passions," and it is the reaction of these thought- forms 
upon the maker of them that causes a vast number of 
the obscure diseases of today. 

The study of the life side in Spirit-Matter has re- 
cently received great impulse. Professor J. C. Bose, 
of Calcutta University, in his lectures upon and scien- 
tific demonstrations of Plant Response, given at Chi- 
cago University, and at Oxford University, England, 
has fully proved that life can be shown in its mani- 
festation. He demonstrated the mechanical response 
in the plant to outside impact, in that the excitatory 
wave produced in a small radish by the prick of a pin 
was accompanied by molecular derangement and re- 
covery ; that it required time for such a disturbance to 
travel to other parts of the plant; that there were 
differences in the power of resistance and of recovery, 
the cauliflower showing fatigue much more quickly 
and reacting less readily than the radish. The internal 
electrical response of the life was shown to be quite 
independent of the external mechanical response. 
Even though the latter might be feeble or scarcely 
apparent, the internal response continued. This re- 
sponse of the life within the plant, its expression of 
its own life powers when its form was disturbed from 
without, demonstrates the Unity of Life. So long as 
a unified electric life remained within the body of the 
plant, so long did the power of internal response 
remain. Too much heat, too great cold, poisons, too 
long privation of light separated the life from its 
plant form. 

It is reasonable that life and form should equally 
receive consideration when viewed by those who can 



48 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

examine them. Baron von Reichenbach, in 1840, 
claimed that he had found that every object, every 
form had within it and sent out from it, radiations of 
force which could be felt and in some instances seen 
by sensitive persons. This force he called Od. He 
said it was polar, and in the radiations were all the 
colors of the rainbow, varying according to the nature 
of the body radiating them. His observations, made 
no doubt on occult lines, are receiving confirmation 
now. Professor J. Joly, in his recent Huxley lecture 
at the University of Birmingham, England, after dem- 
onstrating the existence of a definite halo in certain 
minerals, said that he believed that the halos were due 
to infinitesimal specks of radio-active matter entangled 
within the particles of the minerals. 

M. Baraduc of Paris has recently caught in his 
photographs the swirl of magnetic currents in the ether 
which are produced by thinking. The Roentgen Ray, 
and the still finer N Ray, seem to be connected with 
the ethers of the air, and we may reasonably except 
the discovery of these finer types of matter in water, 
fire and earth. May it not be possible that Science, 
already practically admitting the fact of radio-active 
matter, and the existence of life in minerals, may take 
the next logical step and investigate what radio-active 
matter is? It may be that it is closely connected with 
elemental essence, working in etheric or astral matter. 

The elemental essence, cramped in its power to 
respond while working through the mineral kingdom, 
becomes much more active in the vegetable matter, and 
increasingly so as it works up through the animal 
kingdom. In human bodies, according to Theosophical 



THE LATENT POWERS IN MATTER 49 

investigators, who have penetrated deeply into the 
nature of spirit-matter, and have studied this essence, 
it works actively in three distinct grades ; the finest 
is that which groups matter of the grade in which 
many-sided thought expresses itself in the outer world ; 
the second, less radiant, groups itself in the matter in 
which the different feelings and emotions act ; and the 
third, the etheric physical, interpenetrates the dense 
physical body of action in which the essence is more 
limited in power and expression, but is still marvel- 
ously beautiful, radio-active and shining. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE AURAS AND THE ETHERS 

The radio-active halo which Professor Joly de- 
scribes as existing in minerals, is also spirit-matter, 
but of a finer substance than the dense matter visible 
to ordinary sight. Radio-active halos, when seen sur- 
rounding and interpenetrating the physical bodies of 
human beings, are known as auras. 

In the earliest pictures of the Buddha and the 
Christ, the halo is always to be seen; it is not a mere 
fanciful finish to the picture, but a record of an actual 
fact. The clairvoyant artist would see the life ra- 
diance shining through the etheric image of his crea- 
tion. The radiance of such an image appears, and is, 
as real to the clairvoyant observer, as is the more solid 
outline of its physical counterpart, especially if the 
one thought of is highly spiritual and is greatly revered 
by the thinker. 

The etheric physical aura is spoken of in ancient 
medical works as the health aura, and its condition 
and appearance depend on the health of the body from 
which it emanates. It is of a faintly gray-blue color, 
and "when in health, is composed of an infinitude of 
straight lines radiating evenly in all directions from 
the pores of the body."* They are separate, firm and 
parallel, as nearly as their radiation allows. These 
straight lines are caused by the constant radiation of 
life force from the healthy body; but in disease, there 

* Man, Visible and Invisible, by C. W. Leadbeater, p. 132. 

50 



THE AURAS AND THE ETHERS 5 1 

is a distinct change. The lines in the neighborhood 
of the part affected, or in the whole body, if the dis- 
ease is general, become erratic, drooping and in a state 
of wild confusion. As health is again secured, these 
lines are combed into order once more. The use and 
the care of this aura in protecting against disease 
cannot be overestimated. 

A still finer aura, much less dense than the etheric 
physical, is built of etheric astral matter, and is used 
by the "I am" Self as its vehicle for desire, for feeling 
and sensation. Astral matter is moved by vibrations 
started under the force of desire-emotion, and the 
astral body in the human being is often spoken of as 
the desire or emotion body; it also has definite sense 
centers corresponding to those in the physical body. 
This body is separate from and yet intimately identi- 
fied with and interpenetrating the physical body. That 
it has its separate activities, however, is proved by the 
fact within the knowledge of most people, that a great 
emotion or desire, a passion of anger or of love, may 
be surging through it, and yet the outer physical show 
no sign. 

The elemental essence which uses this astral matter 
for its evolution is of a subtler type; it springs in- 
stantly into action with each vibration of desire, and 
its influence over the unfolding Self is very great 
during the earlier stages of man's evolution. Through 
many re-births man succeeds in permanently changing 
the desire emotion from gross to fine by steady self- 
control. If the astral body be made to vibrate long 
to a feeling of gloom, or of even so-called righteous 
anger, the elemental essence answering to that low 



52 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

rate of vibratory color, will build itself quite definitely 
into the substance of the finer bodies. As evolution 
advances this coarser matter will not be in rhythmical 
accord with the finer matter, and pain and disease will 
result. But again, if the individual should deliberately 
substitute a steadily continued feeling of devotion or 
of unselfish love, holding it there by will-power, the 
lower type of desire would be crowded out by a finer 
class of essence, the vibrations of the three bodies 
would be harmonious and rhythmical, and the aura 
would be seen by the trained clairvoyant to be glowing, 
radiating — if the feeling were one of devotion — the 
purest colors of electric blue, or — if of love — of dain- 
tiest silvery pink. And as, under one of the laws of 
matter, these vibrations radiate out to all other bodies 
around, such a body becomes in time not only full of 
abounding health, but a channel, a health radiator. 

The mental body of the evolving human being is built 
of still finer, more radiant etheric matter, and the 
classes of elemental essence which use it are gaining 
evolution by means of thought-vibrations. That a 
body exists in which consciousness can travel at will, 
scarcely needs proof among thinking people. Who 
has not, while the physical body was quietly seated in 
the arm chair at home, gone in thought to some place, 
carried on in thought various transactions there, and 
returned to the physical body which, seated in the arm 
chair, has been quite ignorant of all that has taken 
place. In innumerable instances such visits have been 
verified by those so visited. 

The consciousness, the Self, must needs have this 
etheric mind-vehicle in which to travel and act; the 



THE AURAS AND THE ETHERS 53 

occultist sees it clairvoyantly — by means of his mental 
body vision — as composed of etheric matter of an ex- 
ceedingly rare and subtle kind. As the intellectual 
growth increases, this aura becomes a very beautiful 
and glorious object. It is not visible to physical or 
astral sight, but is clearly seen by the higher vision 
which belongs to the world of mind.* There are types 
of mental disease which can affect the appearance of 
this aura also, but a man of clean life, pure heart and 
calm, open mind, will not suffer from them unless he 
still needs to complete the payment of some ancient 
karmic debt. 

The time is at hand when in the Western world the 
study of these etheric auras, and of ether itself, must 
have a definite place in Therapeutics. Ether, as a 
whole, has been accepted by science as a fact ; but 
owing to a lack of suitable instruments for its investi- 
gation, little progress has so far been made in the 
study. It has been availed of in a few re-discoveries, 
as in the Marconi waves, the X and N Rays and the 
ultra-violet ray, but without a definite knowledge of 
the material manipulated. 

Occultism has for ages been teaching that Akasha — 
of which Ether is the grossest form — is a universal 
cosmic Principle, a radiant, cool, diathermanous, plastic 
matter, creative in its physical nature, but immutable 
in its higher aspects. In conjunction with radiant 
heat, it recalls dead worlds to life. Esoterically, 
Akasha is Divine Space, yet down on the earth plane 
in its negative aspect, or modified transformation, it 
becomes known in its exoteric manifestation as Ether. 

* Man and His Bodies, by Annie Besant, p. 66, 



54 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

This Ether is said to contain in itself all the germs of 
universal creation ; it is the spiritual hidden mother of 
every existing form and being; of matter and life. 
Force and action come forth through it, and electricity, 
magnetism, heat, light and chemical action are its outer 
physical manifestation. 

Occultism recognizes seven cosmical Elements, four 
entirely physical — earth, water, fire, air — and the fifth, 
ether, is ^mi-material. It will become visible toward 
the end of this Fourth Round, and will be dominant 
over the above named four during the whole of the 
Fifth Round.* Akasha, the parent or highest aspect 
of Ether, is the mother of every existing form. In it 
will be found the prototypes of all things; from this 
they come, and to it they return. 

Ether contains the whole of curative power and is 
the one chief agent in all so-called "miracles" and 
supernatural phenomena in all ages and in every clime. 
This essence, being universal, its effects are innumer- 
able and its possibilities endless. 

The ancient Greeks knew this mysterious all-per- 
vading cause as Archeus, the Egyptians as Phtha-Ra. 

From these brief quotations from ancient Hindu and 
other ancient literature it will be seen that we are not 
undertaking to deal with an, until recently, unknown, 
chimerical substance, but that in all ages the existence 
of Ether and its curative powers have been recognized. 

Whether Ether falls under the law of atomic weight 
and must be examined from that standpoint, or must 
be measured by wave-lengths, as with light vibrations, 
or whether it has some law especially its own through 

* The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, pp. 12, 13. 



THE AURAS AND THE ETHERS 55 

which its various properties may be known, has yet to 
be determined. At the present time that which offers 
the greatest help in fuller investigation of the several 
grades of etheric matter and the various phenomena 
they present, is sense-extension, clairvoyance, through 
the development of the sense centers in our own finer 
bodies. 

We are only at the threshold of all this great 
discovery, of knowledge concerning the Self and its 
powers, the planetary intelligences, the elemental es- 
sence, the nature of matter dense and etheric, health 
and disease and the Healing Intelligence. But evolu- 
tion is rapidly forcing the development of these finer 
bodies, and the opening of their sense centers, for 
definite use in super-physical investigations ; even now 
many physicians are satisfactorily diagnosing diseases 
by means of their own or others' clairvoyant powers. 
We may hope that within a comparatively few years 
sick people the world over may have the humaner treat- 
ment which the clairvoyant vision of their etheric 
bodies and their ailments will bring. 

It will be seen that the elements entering into any 
given case may be many, and yet each must be con- 
sidered if therapeutics is to keep pace with the evolu- 
tion of the finer bodies. In establishing a working 
hypothesis for a truer science of therapeutics, the 
existence of the super-physical matter-built bodies 
must needs be admitted, and diagnosis and treatment 
must include a recognition of the nature of the body 
or bodies in which the disease exists, and also of the 
super-physical and sub-physical agencies entering into 
their restoration to health. 



CHAPTER VIII 

TWO PRINCIPAL TYPES OF CURES 

In order to bring the facts of healing with and with- 
out drugs out of the undifferentiated and therefore 
unscientific state, so that they may be accorded a right- 
ful place in the larger and more progressive Thera- 
peutics, we will classify a few of them and endeavor 
to apply some of the known laws of Nature to their 
explanation. We recognize that each school, each class 
of healers, is endeavoring to express a valuable fact 
in Nature. Some are bringing out a thought that has 
been overlooked by others, and some are taking up 
some important phase, as yet almost unrecognized, of 
a natural law. 

No hard and fast lines should restrict and limit in- 
vestigation ; nor should groove-bound and therefore 
inexpansive ideas be given unnecessary weight. For 
just as it is known in Physics that vibrations of sound 
and color and touch exist both infinitely higher and 
infinitely lower than can be sensed by the physical ear 
or eye or skin, though the possibility of sensing them 
exists in man, so it is a fact in Therapeutics that the 
finer matter in man's bodies exists, as has been fully 
proven by the work of Charcot and the School of 
Nancy in France, and in many independent hypnotic 
experiments, and that this finer matter responds only 
to more specialized vibrations than those which can 

56 



TWO PRINCIPAL TYPES OF CURES S7 

be contacted through drugs. Numberless are the 
recorded authenticated cases of cures through mes- 
merism, music, mantrams, prayer, colors, suggestion, 
relics, thought forms, angels or invisible helpers, will- 
power, sacred waters, planetary forces, polarization ; 
cures which carry unshakable conviction of truth with 
them to the patient and to the observer. 

Instead, then, of wasting energy and time in trying 
to compel all healers to come to a common level of 
thought and action — wasting time, because the law of 
evolution will not permit such an error to become per- 
manent — let us admit for the sake of the argument 
that the health Life can be conveyed through drugs 
to a limited degree in certain classes of cases, and also 
that the Health Intelligence is free to use and does use 
other instrumentalities than drugs. Let us recognize 
the fact, also, that types of bodies differ in their needs ; 
that the advancing stages of evolution are carrying 
rapidly on many individual members of humanity, and 
that their bodies, physical, astral and mental are be- 
coming more refined and sensitive and respond more 
readily to the as yet hidden occult vibrations in the 
health law. 

Taking this as a common ground of unity upon 
which to stand, let us together seek for the truth of 
the Healing Power. 

Presently we will find that in the midst of that 
clamor for profit, for rights, for dominance, which 
now so frequently presents to the public the sectarian 
foundation of the treatment of the sick, there still 
stands out a clear and unmistakable underlying unity 
of purpose as the basis of all schools, of all classes, 



58 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

namely, the desire to help suffering humanity. Names 
of sects only emphasize differences. But there is a 
common point around which all center, upon which 
all are based; all have one aim^— to cure. All justly 
base their claim for recognition on fully substantiated 
records of cures. 

If, then, we accept the facts of cures as a common, 
a unifying basis from which to deal with all cures of 
all schools and all classes, we may, while fully admit- 
ting the incompleteness of the arrangement and the 
insufficiency of the words chosen, deal with cures, not 
as accomplished on a purely physical sectarian basis, 
but from the standpoint of two methods by which is 
carried on the work of the Occult Healing Intelli- 
gences, those supreme administrators of Health, who 
know no limit of power to heal or to maintain health 
except the limitation in the drug remedy or other 
means used. 

Broadly speaking, all cures may be included under 
two heads: 

i. The Progressive, or those which have taken an 
appreciable amount of time in days, weeks, or years 
for their accomplishment, and 

2. The Instantaneous, in which the cure is imme- 
diate, complete and fully apparent. 

Among the progressive cures will be found those 
made through the graduates of the many medical 
schools, who depend largely for the relief of patients 
upon drugs of mineral, vegetable and animal material. 
These drugs, used either in crude, compounded or at- 
tenuated form, and properly adapted to the case, 
supplemented usually by the magnetism of the doctor, 



TWO PRINCIPAL TYPES OF CURES 59 

meet the needs of certain types of people, especially 
those whose nervous systems are not yet very im- 
pressible. Enough of the health life can flow through 
the remedies used, if properly selected, to meet, in this 
younger humanity, the disorder of disease in their 
physical bodies and within a period of time equalize 
or "cure" them. Scientific surgery is to be ranked 
with the progressive, for so far as we know it presents 
no case of instantaneous cure. The cures made by the 
large bodies of healers who use no drugs are also in 
the main progressive. Occasional exceptions to this 
general statement are found, but even when a cure has 
been instantaneous, no reasonable analytical theory 
as to the cause has been brought forward. 

Nor should we too hastily conclude that the instan- 
taneous cure is in its essence separated from the pro- 
gressive by an unbridgeable gulf, it being set apart as 
a miracle, impossible in its happening as well as in 
explanation, while the progressive is considered as a 
perfectly natural scientific occurrence. The difference 
is that in the instantaneous there is an exhibition of 
the still higher powers of the great Health Law of 
Nature than is as yet definitely recognized by many. 
These cases should, with open mind, be earnestly 
studied. Each healing phase of the Law must now or 
in the near future find expression as cures, and logically 
the Healing Intelligences have acted in all. 

On a preceding page we referred to the class of 
patients with as yet little nerve sensitiveness. But 
there are some, and this is especially true of some of 
American parentage of two or three generations, who 
have under the mixture of races, the evolution of 



6o PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

nerve sensitiveness, the increasing power of mind and 
the stage of advancement under the law of evolution, 
begun to bring into activity the so far unused forces 
and unmanifested powers of the Self, the higher dis- 
criminating reason, the strong desire to unselfishly 
serve humanity, the instantaneous action of intuition, 
and the spiritual perception of the right. With these 
cases there is frequently a marked acceleration of nerv- 
ous tension, affecting especially the evolving etheric 
and astral bodies which, if not treated temperamentally, 
taking into account the needs of all these bodies, will 
react injuriously, and in time shatter the physical body. 
Not infrequently cases of this class, highly sensitized, 
with an intensified sub-conscious perception of the 
irregularities of action existing in the disordered sym- 
pathetic nervous system, will be under the care of 
several doctors, each having charge of a special organ, 
as lungs, heart, kidneys, and even then the patient 
dies. Drugs have failed because the disorder is in 
the etheric or the astral body. In such cases no ordi- 
nary medical knowledge avails, for there has come to 
the patient a slight extension of consciousness of the 
activities in the finer matter of his bodies without the 
necessary accompanying knowledge of how to use it, 
and if the healer cannot see or sense this disturbance 
himself, he cannot help. The patient needs to be ex- 
amined by a trained occult student and the disease 
definitely located, whether in the etheric, the astral or 
the mental body, or as having been caused by the 
bodies being, so to say, out of plumb with each other. 
Then the drugless remedy must be applied which will 
most quickly harmonize the three bodies. 



CHAPTER IX 



POLARIZATION 



In classifying the following cures, we take as illus- 
trations a few of those cases which seem to be of most 
frequent occurrence, and the explanation of which will 
relate them to some law of Nature already accepted 
as a fact by religion, philosophy or science, or by all 
of them. 

Polarity seems to occupy a place of vital importance 
in healing, and naturally must do so, since it enters 
into all conditions in Nature. Whether it be a human 
physical form, or a bridge built of wood and iron, each 
physical body, each physical form, has its own normal 
polarity peculiar to itself, differing from all other 
bodies. Disaster usually results from any prolonged 
disturbance of this. 

Much more serious is the effect when the matter of 
the etheric and astral bodies is the subject of polar 
disturbance. The breathing exercises so popular in 
some so-called occult classes have in many cases re- 
sulted in insanity, for the reason that the normal 
breathing of the person, the so to say pre-natal rhyth- 
mic adjustment to breathing, has been superseded by 
a false or unadaptable method, thus disturbing the 
normal polarity of the ethers of the brain. 

True polarization of the three bodies is one phase 
of Health ; disarrangement tends to disease and death. 

61 



62 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

A strong basic emotion such as fear, will thus disar- 
range ; note the case of a lodge initiation where a well 
known man was blindfolded and made to believe that 
a radial artery had been opened and that he was slowly 
bleeding to death. He did die because fear so dis- 
turbed the positive polarizing of the controlling atoms 
of the finer centers, that under the action of fear the 
control passed from positive to negative, from normal 
positive centering health action to a scattering of the 
forces, and a disintegration of the etheric centers. 

But where disarrangement has already obtained, a 
change of polarity will restore health. A well known 
simple instance is that of a man suffering under a 
severe attack of lumbago. A great and pleasant sur- 
prise came to him, and the pain was instantly gone and 
did not return. 

Another case: One day as I sat at work I became 
conscious that I was very tired and I thought "as soon 
as I finish this, I will take a rest." The next thought 
was, "Dear Master, this also is Your work." I forgot 
my body entirely and kept on working for some hours. 
The thought of fatigue did not recur, and when that 
duty was finished I was quite ready for the next. I 
asked myself what had occurred, and my explanation 
is, that my consciousness, or as the late Professor 
James would say, my attention was centered on the 
physical body. When I thought of the Master Jesus, 
my center of consciousness was changed. 

How might this psychological process be physio- 
logically explained ? It is an axiom in Physics that to 
alter the axes of an element is to eflfect a transmutation. 
It is reasonable to apply this law of Physics to the 



POLARIZATION 63 

workings of the law of polarity in human bodies. The 
axes of the three bodies, etheric, astral and mental, 
which in Health would be perfectly harmonious and 
unified in their workings, had become disarranged, out 
of focus, and the energies were negatively polarized 
and were wasting away along negative, chaotic lines. 
The introduction of joyful thought in the second case, 
and of devotion to an ideal of perfect peace and love 
in the last case, had the same effect upon the astral, 
or feeling centers that a strong physical stimulant 
would have in a case of physical exhaustion, and fur- 
ther, the effect produced in the finer matter of the 
subtle bodies would be more relatively permanent. 
The axes of the three bodies, under the stimulus of 
emotion-thought, wefe restored from negative to posi- 
tive polarization and so the transmutation of energies 
from chaos to positive steadfastness was secured. 

The various methods now being experimentally tried, 
such as cures by suggestion, by rhythm, by substitution, 
by will power, by psycho-analysis in some of its present 
phases, seem to have Polarization as their base. The 
relation of this law of Nature to human bodies is 
important in the study of health and the people will 
benefit when it is added to Health studies. 



CHAPTER X 

HEALING BY PRAYER 

Many authentic records of healing by prayer exist, 
and a few cases will be cited here. 

Case i. The lady was a great sufferer from angina 
pectoris. The attacks always left her prostrated for 
two or three weeks. During the last attack she was 
very ill, and death seemed perilously near. Her 
friends summoned Mr. H., a retired minister, who 
makes no charge for his work and uses no method 
but prayer, and bases his faith wholly on the teachings 
of the Christ. Mr. H. came for four successive days 
and prayed, but with no apparent results. The fifth 
day he was in her room praying, when a voice inside 
her said, "It is done," and she found herself entirely 
free from pain and distress. She got up at once, took 
up her home duties and has remained well. 

Case 2. Another case by the same healer was one 
of cancer in an advanced stage. Two eminent spe- 
cialists, unknown to each other and separately con- 
sulted, told the lady that the disease was too deeply 
rooted to attempt an operation, and that she had but a 
few weeks to live. She was urged by friends to try 
the prayer healer. While having no faith in his power, 
she allowed him to come. As soon as he began to 
pray for her, she felt a wave of new life and health go 
over her, and from that moment her strength re- 

6 4 



HEALING BY PRAYER 65 

turned. In a little while she was a well woman, doing 
all her housework. A year later she was still in per- 
fect health, with no sign of return of the disease. 

Case 3. Rt. Rev. Arthur Ingram, Bishop of London, 
relates a story of healing by prayer, which he classes 
with the miracles of the past. The girl was very ill 
with fever, delirious, and begging of her mother to ask 
the Bishop, whom she had heard preach, to come and 
pray for her. As he prayed and anointed her with 
oil, and blessed her, she immediately sank into a deep 
slumber, in which she remained for many hours, and 
awakened restored to reason and health. The Bishop 
says : "I know Jesus was with us. It reminds me of 
the raising of the daughter of Jairus, and seemed in 
some respects a similar case." 

Case 4. We were crossing the Atlantic. I learned 
that my friend, Mrs. P., had been obliged to sit up two 
entire nights from asthma. At bedtime I went to her 
stateroom and found her suffering greatly. I took 
my stand behind her, with one hand at the back of her 
neck and the other in front just below the throat. 
My mental attitude was "I am a channel for the 
Divine Life." Soon the breathing was less labored. 
She went to bed and had a good night's rest and came 
to breakfast next morning and spent the day on deck. 

Why should Case I have required five days before 
an answer came? It was instantaneous when it did 
come, "It is done" showing the completeness of the 
cure. 

Let us make use of a scientific analogy for a part 
of the explanation. Anatomists have found that cer- 
tain cells in the brain project little protoplasmic asso- 



66 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

ciation fibrils or dendrites, whose functions seem to be 
connected with the continuity of thought, memory and 
ideas generally. These fibrils do not attach to the 
fibrils of other cells, but are said to oscillate and con- 
tact them when thought is active. The more persistent 
and connected and continuous the thought, the more 
the habit of continuous contact between the dendrites 
of the different cells of the brain related to that special 
line of thought becomes, and thus the power of what 
we know as continuity of thought is, on that line, built 
and perfected. 

Now for the analogy. Man, the "I am" conscious- 
ness, has not only a gross physical body, but an etheric 
body also, which has its own centers and channels for 
its own kind of work. Also, the astral and mental 
bodies each have their own etheric centers for their 
own lines of activity. 

A brief description of the etheric physical body will 
aid in bringing out the analogy. This body, according 
to the ancient Hindu teachings, has a marvelously intri- 
cate etheric structure of its own along which the life 
currents travel. These etheric nerves all have their 
main center in the etheric heart. Through this center 
the Health-Life flows, vitalizing every part of the 
etheric body and through its intimate interpenetrating 
connection with the gross physical body vitalizes it. 

The astral body has its own main etheric centers 
corresponding to the physical, and it also has been 
supplied to man for a definite purpose. We will as- 
sume that just as the heart of the gross and etheric 
physical body is the center for vital physical expres- 
sion, so is the astral heart the center for activities 



HEALING BY PRAYER 6*J 

which we may term psychological, such as love and 
hate, joy and sorrow, aspiration and gloom; a center 
also through which the hidden healing of the body 
may be accomplished. 

On this basis, it is not unreasonable to suppose that 
as definite a relation exists between the continuous 
Life and the astral etheric heart as is known to exist 
between the continuous mind and the physical brain. 
And, just as the little contacting fibrils have to be built 
in the physical brain before any connected line of 
thought can be perfectly established, so would the 
fibrils of the astral-feeling center have to be built, and 
strengthened and grown into continuous contacting 
etheric channels for the use of the spirit, the "I am," 
before it has an instrument which will sustain the 
higher emotions such as faith and love, as against the 
lower impulses. By this not unreasonable hypothesis, 
healing by prayer, by faith, is as normal and scientific 
a method where the psychological heart is sick, as by 
drugs when the physical body is out of order. 

So in Case i. It is a reasonable conception that the 
contacting astral-etheric fibrils along which thoughts 
and memories and elements of faith — the psychological 
crown of the emotion nature — could flow freely, had 
not been sufficiently extended and gotten together, 
until, under the stress of facing death, and with the aid 
of the devas, and the great faith of the minister, the 
building of the fibrils was completed. Also the prayer 
aided in the unifying and polarizing of the centers. 

Case 2, although having no confidence in prayer as 
a remedy, yet found an immediate beneficial effect 
from it. We may assume that in this case the astral 



68 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

psychological heart fibrils had, through past and pres- 
ent lives, already been built, but that they were tem- 
porarily inactive, or so to say unfocused because not 
definitely active at the time. The arrest of thought 
by the prayer, temporarily stilled the motion of the 
mind, and enabled the devas to polarize the centers of 
the three bodies. The fibrils at once responded to the 
pent up faith which was awaiting the opening or 
adjusting of its channel, and so the faith itself became 
a channel for the Health Life. 

In Case 3 it may be claimed that it was the Bishop's 
magnetism that cured hen What is magnetism? It 
cannot be manipulated nor handled. Occultism records 
that it is one of the properties of Ether. The Bishop's 
deep devotion to the Christ as a living fact, and his 
earnest desire to relieve suffering, together with the 
child's absolute faith in him, made an astral etheric 
channel through which the Health Life could flow 
freely and directly, into the fevered body and brain. 

Case 4 has more of an individualistic element in that 
the attitude of the helper was a definite conscious at- 
tempt to mentally realize that the Divine Health was 
passing outward through her fingers to the sufferer; 
the matter of her own bodies became thus strongly 
polarized, permitting a free flow of the life through 
them. 

To the wholly materialistic mind these statements 
regarding an intricate astral etheric psychological- 
structure which does for the inner soul faculties and 
senses what the physical brain does for the outer 
senses, may seem unreal. But for those whose own 
experiences have demonstrated the existence of the 



HEALING BY PRAYER 69 

inner heart centers through which are sensed the 
emotions of love and hate in their many phases, and 
who know that the psychological heart is not a mere 
chimera, for those there is no need of proof. 

One other point relating to prayer for the sick should 
be presented here. There are apparent causes for the 
failure of prayer. As examples of this we may ask: 
Why did Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley 
die when millions were praying that they might live? 
Here we can trace the working of the law of Action 
and Reaction, the great law of Nature which is for- 
ever working to maintain balance. An individual life 
being continuous from its beginning earth life through 
many succeeding earth lives, it is reasonable to imagine 
for any one individual that in progressing from dense 
ignorance in the early stages, on toward knowledge, 
in each life will be introduced many new factors, many 
new people. These show themselves in later lives 
through loves and hates, benefits and injuries of 
greater or lesser degree. Failing to be worked out 
to their final conclusion as action and reaction, they 
are each time at death laid away in Nature's store- 
house as waiting Karma until they can be brought out 
again under suitable conditions for further working 
out. The psychological moment under the great law for 
paying some great collective debt thus incurred in the 
past, at the moment and under conditions which would 
affect helpfully the largest number of people, had come 
for these souls and could not be postponed. Nor must 
we forget that in each case a vast arrest of thought 
took place the world over, causing a reactionary wave 
of reverence, loyalty, duty to others, forgiveness, to 



70 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

sweep through the souls of millions. The deaths of 
such leaders from causes due in their own karma, and 
the prayers offered, were utilized by the divine rulers 
of humanity for the uplifting of the world a little in 
the psychological scale. 



CHAPTER XI 

ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 

In the ecclesiastical history of Socrates, there is 
mention made of Theodorus, a martyr put to extreme 
torture by Julian the apostate. Ruffinus in his his- 
tory says that he met Theodorus after his trial and 
asked him if the pains were great. He replied that 
at first they were terrible, but after a while there 
seemed to stand by him a young man in white, who 
with soft handkerchief wiped off the great sweat from 
his body, and bade him be of good cheer. When the 
tormenters had done, the angel was gone. 

Many instances of this nature are found in ancient 
literature. We will look into a few of the more re- 
cent, well-attested instances of the work and place of 
these invisible Helpers among the great Health In- 
telligences. 

"I was very ill with pneumonia, and on account of 
the long-time weakness of my heart, the physician 
despaired of my recovery. One of my favorite books, 
The Voice of the Silence, was open near me, and I 
read 'And greater still is . the Buddha of 

Compassion! A wonderfully cool and refreshing 
thrill penetrated me, and my love rushed out to the 
Blessed Lord Buddha, whose teachings are the guide 
of my life. I asked humbly if I could also be per- 
mitted to serve Him and the other helpers of human- 

7i 



>J2, PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

ity. The answer came with lightning rapidity. With 
my eyes open I saw at the foot of the bed, the snowy- 
white, sun-like Blessed Master, sitting in meditation, 
in a dazzling, radiant, outflowing light. With that 
came a new, stronger and somewhat different thrill, 
as if warm sun-rays had penetrated me through and 
through ; and I felt happy and full of peace. I thought 
— May I, too, learn to be unselfish to the endless end ! — 
and I lay there full of a measureless peace. Shortly 
after I got up, and took up my duties; the weakness 
of the heart was gone, to return no more." 

The case is full of instruction, and there are points 
in it that can so far only be glimpsed. The "I am" 
consciousness was fully active in the physical body, a 
condition we find characteristic of this type of cases. 
The earnest devotion of this gentleman to the divine 
Founder of Buddhism must have built into his con- 
sciousness a most definite thought-form of Him as 
He sits in meditation for the helping of the worlds. 
The most natural result of this devotion would be that 
he would see the form as in mind he always imaged 
Him. Even to see the form as he did, enveloped in 
radiance, might be the result of the refining by illness 
of the gross physical body, thus enabling the inner 
etheric vision to become clear. 

But now, for the first time in his experience, the 
form was alive and full of radiant outflowing light- 
rays, whose warmth and health penetrated even his 
physical body and healed it ; and his mind, too, became 
peaceful under their beneficence. Who but a trained 
occujjst can say what glorious Intelligence responded 
to his whole-hearted desire to serve humanity, and in 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 73 

return radiated in full abundance the bounteous Na- 
ture Health-Life into mind and body. 

A case with some similarities, but a difference worth 
noting, is that of a lady who had been very ill with la 
grippe. Very weak, nervous and still full of pain, 
she got up and walked to the home of a friend a few 
doors away from her own home. This friend was 
just sitting down for the noon-day meditation, and 
asked the lady to join her. The lady states: "At my 
friend's request I sat down and began meditation in 
my usual way. Suddenly there appeared something 
very brilliant to my right, a little above and in front 
of me, which, as I looked, definitely outlined itself as 
a majestic figure; and I then noticed most shining 
golden rays streaming from it toward and through me, 
and which continued while the meditation lasted. Ab- 
sorbed by the glorious vision I at once started home, 
and as I reached my steps I noticed with astonishment 
that I was walking with my usual vigor. I had no 
pain ; I never felt better ; I was fully cured." 

The fact of there being color in the shining rays is 
an important point. The lady did not know the sig- 
nificance of color as connected with health or that the 
color of the rays had any relation to her case. But 
of all the colors, this is the most efficacious in the dis- 
ease she was suffering from. The strong inference 
must be, that the Intelligence taking that method of 
helping her, used a suitable elemental essence through 
which to pour out the Health Life to her. 

The question arises whether she could not have been 
cured as quickly if she had remained at home. What 
part, if any, did the friend have in the cure? This 



74 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

brings us to the importance of psychological environ- 
ment as an aid in any form of healing, and especially 
in psychological cases. The friend had for some 
hours been studying a Hindu medical work, and had 
been intent upon understanding the mechanism of the 
etheric body, and of the "Ojas" which flowed through 
the etheric nerves. As all physical bodies are continu- 
ally throwing off and taking on infinitesimal particles 
of matter, and as the etheric body, animated by the 
life energies, sends out and is played upon not by par- 
ticles, but by vibrations, life- waves, magnetism- waves, 
which also ceaselessly flow out and those from others 
flow in,* reasonably such an atmosphere as existed in 
the friend's room had in it a higher type of elemental 
essence and consequently a more helpful health power 
through which the Intelligence could work, than did 
the pain-filled home. To this extent we can each be- 
come helpers, by making our own outflowing physical 
particles, and our etheric vibration-waves such as will 
be helpful to all we contact. 

In the case of a youth very ill with epilepsy, the 
boy's own story is this : "I was alone in my bed when 
my misery overcame me. I prayed in agony for relief. 
Suddenly I heard a knock at the door, and then the 
door was thrown open with a loud crash, and I saw a 
pure white globe like a ball, and it came to me and 
glided up and down my body, and a voice said : 'Boy, 
thy cross is very heavy, but trust in God and rise; 
thou shalt be helped/ 'May God reward thee,' I said, 
and the globe moved upward and vanished. Now I 

* An Advanced Text Book of Hindu Eeligion and Ethics, 
Part II, Chap. III. 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 75 

rose from the bed and sat down and prayed fervently 
and hopefully. While thus praying, something fell 
down from the ceiling onto the box on which I was 
sitting and I saw it was the globe. I shook with fear. 
'Child/ said the voice, 'God sends me here. You are 
cured. You can now go wherever you wish. You are 
cured. Walk, stand, do as you like, your cross has 
been taken from you.' " From this time his health 
was perfect and there was no relapse. f 

It may quite reasonably be asked, why should the 
helping Intelligence use the form of a globe? From 
the study of a number of like cases, it would seem 
that if the Intelligence understood the fluidic nature 
of etheric matter, as reasonably it would, it could 
manipulate it as readily as a boy could shape his snow- 
ball. The form, then, which would be used as the 
channel for the Health Life, would only need to be 
such as best fitted the boy's own desire nature, one 
which would excite the least fear. The Intelligence 
could work and speak through a globe of ether, as 
easily as through any other etheric form. In the cases 
so far studied, the form usually seems to be the image 
of some high ideal of the individual. If a Christian, 
the Virgin Mary or the Christ; if a Hindu, Shri 
Krishna. But if no religion, if no ideal is held there 
might be no vision and probably there would be only 
the healing in evidence. 

"I had known for some time that I was overwork- 
ing, but supposed that I could overcome the com- 
plaining of my body as I had done in the past, and 
rise above physical conditions. But one morning, after 

t The Theosophist, Vol. XXII, p. 764. 



y6 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

a more than usual strenuous week of mental and physi- 
cal labors, I realized that I was really ill. A dear 
physician friend was sent for. At her next visit, a 
few hours after, she brought another friend for con- 
sultation, and I soon found myself in the hands of 
doctors and a trained nurse. 

"The one condition that was dominant above the 
complications that arose was a feeling that my spine 
had taken its departure, and that only a large hollow 
tube existed in its place. That feeling of the tube 
was most peculiar, and unpleasant, and all faculty for 
consecutive thought seemed nil. After a week had 
passed I was cognizant of faint odors, as of fresh 
herbs and resins, such as one might get in a great 
piney forest. It seemed familiar, and made me think 
of an occurrence in southern California, where I had 
been a few weeks before. I did not just know where 
the odors came from, but it seemed as if there lay a 
healing balm within the perfume, if I could only get 
enough of it — it had been very faint. 

"I remember thinking, in a sort of dreamy way, 
that if I could breathe in a quantity of that balmy 
fragrance it would have a curative effect on my 
spine. 

"One evening as I was lying quietly, wishing some 
help could come to relieve that awful hollow feeling 
(for it seemed as if I might lose consciousness other- 
wise), I suddenly found myself deeply inhaling those 
odors. Then a, to me, most wonderful thing hap- 
pened. I could see H. P. Blavatsky standing close 
by my side, holding her beautiful hands (one arched 
over the other, the tips of the fingers of the one hand 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS JJ 

touching the palm of the other, thus making a hollow 
space between) from whence issued the fragrance I 
was inhaling. I was almost startled, and the tears 
began to come, but I knew I must control my emotions. 
I felt so humble. Why should this great Soul come 
to me? It had not been my karma to know her per- 
sonally. The thought came, 'Oh! did you bring the 
odors ? I thought they might come from southern Cali- 
fornia today! 

"Speaking in French, she said: 'It is just as easy 
to convey it from Thibet as from Los Angeles/ The 
words were not spoken in human language. Those 
who have had like experiences will know that there is 
a method of communicating thought without using ar- 
ticulate sounds. I went on breathing, and could feel 
a change going on within my body. 

"Presently a peculiar thing happened. The figure of 
H. P. B. disappeared, and a tall, dark man stood there, 
his hands in the same position. Then the odors faded, 
and the figure disappeared. It all seemed so wonder- 
ful that H. P. B. should come to me and bring that 
healing power. In that short time I felt my spine 
renewed, and in three days' time it was quite normal. 
The fragrance came fainter and fainter each day. I 
think I did not notice it after the fourth day." 

This was a very sensible, matter-of-fact physician. 
The fact that the "helper" came in the form of a 
revered and living teacher is interesting, and empha- 
sizes the statement made in Chapter IV concerning 
human helpers on the invisible planes. In this case 
the patient's etheric sense center of smell became a 
part of the channel for the Health-Life. Not infre- 



78 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

quently well people sense odors when none are physi- 
cally near. The physical senses are only the counter- 
parts in gross matter of the real sense faculties in finer 
matter whose powers are not so limited in time and 
space. 

Putting aside many fully verified and equally inter- 
esting cases, we will take up a cure of the same na- 
ture, which has, through newspaper discussion, been 
of almost world-wide celebrity. This is done in or- 
der to bring out further points regarding the rational 
elements in occult cures. The story is a typical illus- 
tration of other cases of which we know much more 
than of this, the story of Miss Dorothy Kerin, of 
London, England. 

During her seven years of illness, much of which 
time she had been bed-ridden, thirty-seven doctors had 
been called in to see her, and although during the first 
years of the illness there had been much talk of "hys- 
teria" and "malingering/' it was finally recognized that 
some disease did exist. The disease had reached a 
point where all the advanced phases of tuberculosis 
of the lungs were well marked, and so admitted by the 
physicians attending her at the time. Her case had 
been officially registered by the attending physicians 
under the Compulsory Notification of Consumption 
Act. 

We make our synopsis of the story from the pub- 
lished account of Dr. E. L. Ash, her family physi- 
cian. On Sunday evening, February 18, 1912, she 
was and had been for several days in a comatose state. 
The relatives were gathered round what they believed 
to be her death bed. Suddenly those present were 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 79 

surprised to hear her say very slowly, "I'm listening." 
Her own version of the facts tells the story fully. 

"In my sleep something said 'Dorothy' three times 
distinctly. And I said, 'Yes, I'm listening — who is it?' 
And then the Voice said, 'Listen!' And then I felt 
two warm hands take hold of both of mine and lift 
them up and put my hands on my eyes, and then put 
them down again. The Voice then said 'Dorothy' 
again, after it had put my hands down. 

"Then there was a beautiful light which flashed 
over the screen at the corner of the foot of the bed. 
The light came right over the bed — and at the back 
of it was a beautiful Angel. It had got my hands 
in its hands — and put them onto my eyes — and then 
it said: 

" 'Dorothy ! Your sufferings are over ! Get up and 
walk!' 

"My eyes came open and I looked round and saw 
them all — my relations — round my bed. And I said : 
T want my dressing-gown ; I want to walk.' 

"My mother then tried to hold me down in bed, 
and the Voice — which had together with the light 
come to here (showing a place near the left side of 
her face) again said : 'Get up and walk.' 

"My mother said, 'You must not get up.' And I 
said to her, 'Can't you hear it?' and she couldn't. 

"Then after all they gave me the dressing-gown, 
and some of the light from the foot of the bed came 
round by me and I put my hand on it, and I got out 
of bed and followed it, and it went straight to the 
door, and then I walked straight out of the passage 
into the little room at the end of the passage to see 



80 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

if my stepfather was there, to find him. And he 
wasn't there, so I went right back into the front room 
again. 

"The light was still on my hand, and it went out 
of the door again, and down the passage and into 
the little room, where he (my stepfather) was then. 

"And then I went right back to the front room 
and sat down on a chair and the light joined itself to 
the other piece of light again (a portion of this had 
wandered over the bed) and disappeared over the 
screen, where it had come from. 

"When I sat down in the chair, they (my relations) 
were all shaking and frightened. And my stepfather 
fell down on the floor and started crying, in an atti- 
tude of prayer. 

"And I said, 'Why are you so frightened? I am 
quite, quite well!' 

"And I told them I felt as though I could eat some 
supper. And I had it, and ever since I have been 
quite well and strong, without even the least bit of 
pain — not even tired/' 

Two other visions occurred to her, the last one on 
March nth, when her restoration to health was fully 
admitted by all who saw her. 

"I suddenly heard a Voice say 'Dorothy!' Then 
I woke and sat up in bed; and that great beautiful 
light came all over the bed again, from the foot, until 
it came right up all round me ; and then in the middle 
it opened, and there was a beautiful, beautiful woman's 
face, with a beautiful halo on the head. 

"The shoulders and arms followed the head out of 
the light. In her right hand she had a beautiful An- 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 8 1 

nunciation lily — a big one — and she was holding both 
her hands up like that — (extending her arms and 
raising them until the hands were just above the level 
of the head). 

"And then she said : 'Dorothy, you are quite well 
now. God has brought you back to use you for a 
great and privileged work. Many sick will ye heal 
in your prayer and faith. Comfort the sorrowing! 
Give faith to the faithless!' 

"Then she said: 'Many rebuffs you will have, but 
remember, you are thrice blessed. His grace is suffi- 
cient for thee, and He will never leave thee Y 

"Then she made the sign of the cross on me with 
her beautiful lily, and it came right on my face, so 
that I could smell the scent of it. Then she said, 
'Now sleep, child!' I did not see her go away, but 
after she was gone the room was full of the scent 
of the lily. Then I slept until the morning/' 

In a letter Dorothy says: "There is a science of 
religion as well as a science in' every phase of the 
material world. The old thought that God and His 
holy Angels dwell far away in Heaven is inconceiv- 
able. We live ever in their presence. The holy An- 
gels are ever with us to protect and guide, and to 
bring all things to our knowledge. Their nearness has 
been revealed to me often — most frequently, out in 
God's great cathedral of Nature, where trees, flowers, 
birds, are expressions of His thoughts, and praise 
Him in their beauty. In my own case I realize that 
my long illness and quietness prepared me to receive 
a message from the unseen which health and success 
and ambition sometimes shut away." 



82 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

'The fact remains/' states Dr. Ash, "that she has 
been well ever since her remarkable recovery." 

The comments upon the case have been many and 
varied. Some, even medical men, have scoffed at the 
statement, and denied the possibility of such a cure; 
but we may safely put against these, the opinion of 
the many doctors in the case, some of whom were ex- 
pert diagnosticians. Others again have said that "the 
form assumed was a hypnotic suggestion conveyed by 
the apparition to the sub-consciousness of the per- 
cipient/' While this is a definite admission that the 
apparition itself was a conscious, intelligent entity, 
yet, neither in the "hypnotic suggestion," nor in the 
"apparition/' nor in the "sub-consciousness of the 
percipient" do we seem to find a satisfactory explana- 
tion of the main fact in the case, viz. : there was an 
inflow of the Health-Life so full, so free, that the 
whole body was instantly revitalized, the whole inner 
nature at once changed from fear to courage, from 
doubt to faith, from helplessness to strong will in 
action. 

Another view claimed that the vision was a thought- 
form built up by the patient from the religious teach- 
ings of her childhood. Even supposing this to have 
been true, as it may or may not have been, such a 
possible thought-form had never so far as known 
previously manifested any life in it. Whence came, 
then, all the conditions of a living, vital, radiant being, 
able to speak and otherwise comport itself as humans 
do? Something seems to be lacking in such an ex- 
planation. There is an unknown quantity, a potent 
Life, manifesting through all the phenomena of form; 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 83 

and it is this Life which we would reverently, scien- 
tifically seek for and find. It is true that one body 
of scientists denies to science the right to concern her- 
self with ultimate causation, but it would seem to be 
a very limited scientific outlook which, because a par- 
ticular had been found, would refuse to consider a 
universal and even deny its existence. Every form 
is a universal, particularized by life. Both must be 
investigated. Neither life nor form are outside the 
realm of true, all comprehensive science. We will 
now take such clues to the scientific occult aspects of 
this case as we have found, and with them, seek for 
more. 

The real question is: How and through whom 
was the instantaneous cure accomplished? Analyzing 
the different elements set forth in previous chapters 
which so far as we know enter into Occult Healing, 
it would seem that neither planetary relations alone, 
nor elemental essence alone, nor thought-forms alone, 
nor polarization alone, nor all combined could have 
gathered the Health-Life into that devitalized body 
which for five days had lain in an inactive, comatose 
state, permitting the Self, the "I am" consciousness, 
but very faintly to express its powers through it; 
though reasonably all these factors may have had their 
special part to perform in the cure. Let us look into 
the statement of Miss Dorothy herself, that "It was 
an angel." 

The most illuminating study upon the Healing 
Devas or Angels of which we know, is that to be found 
in "Man; Whence, How, and Whither," by Annie 
Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. 



84 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

In Chapter XXIV, entitled, "Religions and Their 
Temples," we find a description, as seen by the higher 
clairvoyance, of how a Healing Angel does his work. 
The great Order of Healing Devas belong to the type 
identified by Christian Mystics with the hierarchy of 
the Archangel Raphael. Each of these healing angels 
has special cases in his plans of service, which during 
the Temple worship he brings before the great Deva 
Teacher, presenting them as his devotion offering to 
the Logos, with the thought that thus he throws him- 
self and his life into the healing of souls and minds 
and bodies, as his sacrifice to the Logos. The out- 
streaming sacrifice from each such Deva, showing as 
luminous colors of sunset green interspersed with the 
darker greens, are gathered into a focus by the Deva 
Teacher, and are sent up by him to a circle of healing 
Devas above, and through them to the Chieftain of 
the Healing Ray, Who once more presents this aspect 
of the world to the Logos. When they thus offer 
themselves and their thoughts, there comes back a 
great flow of response. It seems as though the Logos 
pours Himself, rays Himself through His higher 
Devas into them, and then again out through them 
to the objects of their sympathy. The culmination of 
their sacrifice is to be an active agent for His action. 

It is reasonable, from the standpoint of the world- 
scriptures, and from the statements of the Mystics of 
all ages, as well as the confirmation of present-day ex- 
periences, that a Healing Angel had quietly watched 
the progress of mind and body in this case, and pa- 
tiently waited for the psychological moment, the fit- 
ting time to come, to become the active agent for the 



ANGEL OR DEVA HELPERS 85 

kind of healing needed. As the Health Life raying 
out along positive lines, through the Angel, touched 
the etheric atoms of the three bodies, every molecule, 
every organ, every fluid would spring into action with 
the new Life and the healing be accomplished. 

One very important fact should be noted.' The heal- 
ing was for a purpose. Dorothy was given a work 
to do. "Comfort the sorrowing. Give Faith to the 
faithless. " May she indeed become a world-helper. 

Another view of this great subject is one, not of 
healing but of endurance of pain, such as that of 
Theodorus the Martyr, mentioned in the early part 
of this chapter. One phase of this power of endur- 
ance, with some at the present day, grows out of the 
recognition that for ages we have by resistance of 
personal suffering thrown off from us our own justly 
earned pain. We have thrown it out into the great 
maelstrom of world pain, making the world's suffer- 
ing greater on account of it. 

Recognizing this, there develops in the heart a great 
longing to lessen the world pain, a willingness to bear 
one's own when it comes, to pull it out, as it were, 
from the great seething world mass, and burn it up 
by suffering it oneself. To illustrate: In a case of 
severe inflammation of the brachial nerve plexus, the 
pain was excruciating. But the higher Self was be- 
ginning to rule its bodies. The soul was growing 
strong and was trying to lessen the world pain, and 
the reply when help was urged was to this effect: 
"Through the ages past, I have rebelled against pain, 
and have thrown it off, not caring what became of it 
so long as / was free. Now I shall bear it, burn it up 



86 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

with will to relieve the world suffering to that extent 
at least." Here service is rendered in two ways: 
lessening the world pain by bearing it oneself, and the 
angel helpers are left free for other work. 



CHAPTER XII 

MUSIC 

Another method of healing, and indeed a much 
more common one than is generally recognized, is by 
means of music. It is significant of the power of 
music on human bodies, that theatres, concerts and 
musical interpretations are constantly thronged; indi- 
cating that there is an occult need for it. Probably 
the great masses of people are largely unconsciously 
finding music a remedy for the quieting of their bodies, 
and as a relief from the increasing restlessness and 
irritability caused by the pushing onward from the 
inner realms of this stage of evolution. 

It is well to inquire into the hidden side of music 
in order to understand its action on and in matter. 
The physical manifestation of music is through sound. 
But whence comes sound ? Again we find our answer 
in both Eastern and Western Scriptures. It is said 
that the Logos expresses Himself in seven different 
ways, or through seven Creative Powers, or Intelli- 
gences. The source of, and Life of all Power, is the 
"One only/' the Logos, who at the time for the be- 
ginning of manifestation of the worlds, "breathes" 
forth a "Word," a sound, which calls into activity these 
seven apparently separated but only differently func- 
tionated great centers of Power, or seven Planetary 
Intelligences who stand ready to do His Will as out- 
lined to them. 

87 



88 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

That Divine Great Breath,* breathed forth through 
these seven centers, is in itself the source of eternal 
motion, is the root of all sound, is the substratum of 
the Pythagorean "music of the spheres." All these 
seven planetary centers of energy and intelligence are 
unfolding in their own specialized matter, each its 
seven centers of activity, of which sound — the 
further projection of the Word — or Music, is one. 
All nature, visible and invisible, is sending out sound 
of its own kind, on its own plane, as the flowing 
waters and the wind breezes attest. Hence it is not 
difficult nor unreasonable to imagine that the life 
aspect of the "Word/' expressing itself in the power 
side of the different types of music, is common to 
all the seven planets of our solar system; and as 
each has its own special type, the matter and the ele- 
mental essence of our bodies will respond most quickly 
and readily to the particular keynote or particular com- 
bination of musical sounds which the ruling planet 
of our bodies sends forth. For instance, not all hearts 
are stirred by martial (Mars) music, but only those 
whose emotion bodies are of the type of Mars, or 
temporarily under his influence. 

No one type of music meets all needs, but each "I 
am" responds to its own type; or, rather, in the 
earlier stage of its evolution responds to the predom- 
inating planetary essence in its bodies. 

For it must never be forgotten that all the indi- 
vidual "I ams" are on the way to understanding, and 
mastering and using matter, and the time will come 
with each "I am," when the powers energizing in mat- 

* The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, p. 310. 



MUSIC 89 

ter can no longer attract or bind ; when in many ages 
to come each "I am" will build its own worlds. But 
in this cycle few have climbed to that height, and the 
"I am" in most of us is still immersed in the matter 
of the bodies, the almost helpless sport of the forces 
of desire. Not having yet developed the use of a 
strong will of mastery and rulership over matter, the 
nature forces now rule the "I am." 

Admitting, then, for the time this cosmic view of 
the Great Breath, or Word, as the root of music, 
and as the basis for our study of the factors in healing 
by music, we turn to the more generally known and 
popular facts. In the countries of the East, there are 
in use certain sacred words, mantrams, each having 
its own ruling Devas. These mantrams scientifically 
intoned, and the vibrations directed by the Devas of 
those sounds, have the power to build matter into 
form, or to break up existing forms. By use of these 
mantrams, bodies can be made to vibrate to health 
instead of disease; rhythm can be made to supersede 
inharmony. The occult power inherent in music was 
well known in ancient India, and the knowledge has 
not been wholly lost. The rhythm and measure of 
music have great influence. Each grade of matter from 
coarse to fine vibrates to music. The coarsest or long- 
est wave-lengths belong to the matter of the physical 
body. Those shorter and finer with swifter repetition 
move the etheric matter of the astral-emotion body, 
while the still finer wave-lengths are those of the 
specialized etheric matter in which thought moves. 

Built as all true music is, with fullest mathematical 
precision, and upon a sound psychological basis, the 



90 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

regularity with which vibrations of the notes impinge 
upon the sufferer's physical, astral and mental bodies, 
has a calming, soothing effect, thus bringing the etheric 
centers of the three bodies into perfect alignment with 
each other ; in other words, polarizing them, and per- 
mitting the flow of health life to pass through all the 
etheric channels unimpeded. As one writer expresses 
it, "The subconsciousness becomes filled with rhythmic 
melody," and seen by clairvoyant vision the inner 
bodies are swathed in the most beautiful colorings of 
the living elemental essence which has answered to the 
rhythmical vibration. Some of the most difficult cases 
of neurasthenia have yielded to the power of har- 
monious, well-chosen music, when the vibrations were 
not obstructed by cross vibrations such as fear, or 
dread of criticism. 

Close observers state that the effect of music may 
be deeply lasting and beneficial. On the other hand, 
it may be distinctly deleterious. It may awaken sen- 
suality or other base passions. It may break down 
the nerve tone, cause nervous depression and exhaus- 
tion, or emasculate the character. Plato viewed cer- 
tain kinds of music with suspicion. He said, and 
Aristotle emphasized it, that any change made in na- 
tional music brought about a similar one in the na- 
tion. In confirmation of this we may note in the 
United States the seeming marked change from the 
almost exclusively military music of fifty years ago 
to the now everywhere heard ragtime music; and the 
change in conduct of the children then and the younger 
generation today is very marked. The majority of 
children are now lacking in practice of obedience, 



MUSIC 91 

reverence and responsibleness. Whether the change is 
even partly due to the music should be inquired into. 

Many instances of cures by means of music are 
found, as we look through the records of time. For 
instance, David with the music of his harp, drove an 
obsessing entity away from Saul.* Asclepiades em- 
ployed music for the same purpose. Celsus after much 
observation, recommends it for certain forms of in- 
sanity. Coelius Aurelianus says that in the treatment 
of that form of insanity which alternates between rage 
and grief, the music should be full of sweetness as 
well as vivacity; that with those given to silly and 
meaningless laughter, martial music is best. 

Mesmer found that "sound has an attractive prop- 
erty; it draws out disease, which streams out to en- 
counter the musical wave, and the two blending to- 
gether, disappear in space." f Is there not* here a 
clear description of the action of the elemental es- 
sence in all matter? 

Baglivi and Bonnet used music for gout with much 
success. Roger extolled its power in cases of disease 
of the lungs. Voltaire said we should go to the opera 
to promote digestion. Democritus found that the 
music of the flute was a remedy for the plague. Thales 
of Crete used the same remedy for plague with suc- 
cess. Galien used music as an antidote for the bite 
of vipers and scorpions; and Desault claimed great 
success with it in hydrophobia. 

The subject had been but vaguely discussed in West- 
ern literature in modern times up to 1875, when Dr. 

* I Samuel, XVI, 14-23. 

t Isis Unveiled, by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, p. 215. 



92 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

Joseph A. Chomet published a theory of cure by mu- 
sic^ and cited a number of cases to prove that his 
theory was true. Among other cures was one of epi- 
lepsy. One day the patient, having been listening to 
music when she felt the epileptic fit coming on, suf- 
fered only the symptoms. Every time afterward that 
she felt the approach of the paroxysm, the young girl 
was placed so that she could hear music, and nature, 
being thwarted as it were in its perverted tendencies 
and diverted from the, for it, wrong channels, lost, at 
last, the habit of convulsive movements. 

Here the substitution of a rhythmical vibration of 
sound affected the elemental essence in the etheric 
physical body, and of the astral also. Dr. Chomet re- 
lates the case of a noted musician and composer who 
was attacked by a fever with continuous delirium, 
which constantly increased in violence. The third day 
in his delirium he begged that they would give a little 
concert in his room. With misgivings the physicians 
consented. At the first notes of Bernier's Cantata his 
countenance became calm, his eyes quiet, and the con- 
vulsions ceased; he shed tears of pleasure, and the 
fever left him while the concert lasted, but as soon 
as it was over he relapsed. On repeating the concert, 
the fever and delirium again subsided, and the music 
became such a necessity that the night watchers con- 
tinued it all night. Ten days of this music treatment 
effected a complete cure without the use of other rem- 
edies. In both the above cases, the music was fitted 
to the need of the individual. 

t The Influence of Music on Health and Life; G. P. Putnam 
& Sons, New York. 



music 93 

It is an open question, and remains to be investi- 
gated, whether Western music can effect an instan- 
taneous cure, though it does work progressively. It 
does not seem to create an environment of mental 
peace, of an outer sense of rhythm, the co-existence 
of which helps the mind more easily to hold the emo- 
tion nature firmly and aids the "I am" consciousness, 
the spirit of man, to dominate the mind. 

That clear observer of art in Nature, Mrs. Annie 
Besant, thus differentiates between Eastern and West- 
ern music. She says: "In Hindu music there are 
delicate notes given out by the instruments which thrill 
softly out and cause subtlest vibrations in the higher 
bodies, till all sounds are left behind and spirit is set 
free. Those single delicate notes seem to have a 
power greater than any chord; for the chord raises 
passion or emotion ; these single notes thrill to spiritual 
ecstasy; the chord predisposes to activity, the single 
notes to quiescence, to contemplation, to peace. 

"Gradually the whole body is calmed, and held to 
these steady vibrations and the calm is answered by 
the steadiness of the consciousness responsive to its 
rhythmically vibrating vehicle." * 

These observations of Mrs. Besant were made as 
to the effect of Hindu music upon meditation, but 
they seem to apply equally to the preliminary calming 
of the bodies in healing. 

This "freeing of the spirit" would seem to be an 
essential to instantaneous cure; for accustomed as is 
the "I am" working in the subtle body to respond con- 
tinually to impacts from without, this subtle, subcon- 

* Religion and Music, by Annie Besant, p. 16. 



94 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

scious, astro-mental body of ours is ever vibrating 
and ever changing its vibrations, causing continual 
changes in consciousness, and these again react on the 
body. The Hindu music arrests or checks these re- 
actions, imposes its own vibrations on the bodies and 
instead of a disturbing jangle there comes a realisa- 
tion of the Self, of the divinity in one's own Self, un- 
der the rhythmical vibrations of the music. 

The peace would permit the healing life to flow 
along the line of the ether ic atoms instantly and in 
its fulness and completeness, instead of in the slower 
progressive way of step by step through the sub-plane 
matter of the bodies. Music, then, may be looked 
upon as one means of polarizing the three bodies, and 
can be used in its lower or higher potencies according 
to the knowledge of the healer. The Sanskrit man- 
trams when scientifically used, still the bodies, attune 
the "I am," so that the healing Life can instantly 
reach the bodies without obstruction. It is significant 
of the present awakening to the study of the finer 
bodies of man, that we are hearing of psychical mu- 
sic, transcendental music, fourth dimensional music. 
It is true, also, that some music, for instance, Number 
18 of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, the motif 
of the Holy Grail in Parsifal, the hymn, "Nearer, My 
God, to Thee" and "Home, Sweet Home," does di- 
rectly affect the subtler etheric bodies. This use of 
music can be very helpful. Even in the matter of 
surgical operations it has its place. Recently a boy 
of fourteen, whose heart was too weak to stand an 
anaesthetic, was obliged to have an injured artery in 
his arm repaired. A young girl played "The High- 



music 95 

land Fling," and the boy was told to concentrate on 
it. Afterward he said he had felt but little pain. 

Some of the hospitals in the Western world are 
making a satisfactory demonstration of the value of 
harmonious music, and have placed it in their list of 
remedies. They find that daily music inspires and 
cheers the patients and at least establishes temporarily 
a different vibration from that of disease. 

A famous London doctor stated in a lecture, that 
different melodies can be used in curing certain dis- 
orders; that Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" ac- 
celerated the action of the heart and lungs. Chopin's 
"Nocturne in E flat" and Staenhagen's "Pastorales" 
are able to soothe excited brains and induce peace and 
sleep, while Godard's "En Courant" dissipates nerv- 
ous weariness. From these observations it would seem 
that those cases which are of a dull, sluggish nature, 
should be gradually roused by powerful and impres- 
sive music; those of a nervous disposition by sweet 
and tender melodies. A gloomy temperament might 
improve under light, short, gay music. The study of 
music vibrations and of the types of elemental es- 
sence responding to them and their effect on the 
etheric bodies of people should become very active in 
the near future. 

Some observations upon the nature of the notes 
of the scale have been made by M. Gretry, a noted 
French musician, and are given here for students to 
use as a basis for investigation.* He says it is dan- 
gerous for a hypochondriac to have to listen to very 

* The Influence of Music on Health and Life, by Dr. J. A. 
Chomet, p. 199. 



g6 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

grave and serious music. It would give rise to or 
increase feelings of depression. The choice of the 
key should fit the ' temperament of the patient. The 
key of C Major is noble and frank; C Minor is pa- 
thetic. D Major is brilliant ; D Minor is melancholy. 
E Flat is grand and also pathetic; E Major is spar- 
kling; E Minor is sad although it is the first minor 
scale in Nature. F Major is mixed; F Minor most 
pathetic of all. F Sharp Major is hard and sharp 
and overloaded with accidentals; F Sharp Minor is 
also hard. G Major is warlike and not so grand as 
C Major; G Minor is the most pathetic, except that 
of F Minor. A Major is very brilliant; A Minor is 
simple and least brilliant. B Flat is grand but less 
so than C Major, and is more pathetic than F Major; 
B Major is brilliant and gay, and B Minor expresses 
sincerity and artlessness. 

From the facts presented, the student may gather 
that true music is many-branched and has its place in 
Therapeutics. The gods of Music — the Gandharvas, 
as they are named in India, and whose home is in the 
heaven world — pour forth on the thought plane of 
Nature great symphonies; these are caught by the 
sensitive inner senses of the true musician and 
transcribed into earth terms. The music devas are 
one of the channels of the Health-Life, distributing 
it according to the individual key-notes of men. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THOUGHT-FORMS AND COLOR 

"Each definite thought produces a double effect — 
a radiating vibration, and a floating form." * 

Those who desire to help to restore health to the 
world will have already learned something of the 
power of definite thought as a factor ; will have learned 
that each definite vibration of thought draws round it 
the elemental essence appropriate for its expression, 
and then swiftly makes its way to its destination. This 
is equally true of evil as of good thoughts. There- 
fore, the would-be healer must first purify his own 
life and his own thought. Otherwise he transfers his 
own ordinary weaknesses and frailties to his patients 
in the thoughts he sends them, for the thoughts we 
think are things. 

In "The Hidden Side of Things," Vol. II, Mr. Lead- 
beater speaks of the three classes of thought-forms. 

1. Those which shoot straight out away from the 
person, aiming at a definite objective person or place. 

2. Those which hover round him and follow him 
wherever he goes. 

3. Those which he leaves behind him as a sort of 
trail which marks his route. 

Even though the student may not be able to see or 

feel or otherwise sense these three classes, the differ- 

* Thought-Forms, Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, p. 21. 

97 



98 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

ence can be intellectually grasped with certainty. The 
first class, definite, strongly energized, cannot be de- 
flected from their course. They go straight to their 
destination. If the intended recipient is preoccupied, 
absorbed with other matters, the thought- form waits 
at the surface of his aura until it can fulfill its mission. 

The second class is not contacted by people unless 
they are closely connected with the man. It is in this 
respect that children are especially subject to con- 
tamination. Their associates should be most carefully 
chosen. 

The third class is usually of a vague, indeterminate 
character, though endowed with sufficient energy to 
attach themselves to any drifting mind. Psychologi- 
cally, drifting means that the Self is not at the moment 
active in its physical body; that the cerebro-spinal 
super- or etheric-centers are temporarily quiescent, 
and that the sympathetic or subconscious etheric cen- 
ters are temporarily dominant. If our minds are not 
definitely occupied by our own thoughts as we walk 
through streets and stores, and other places frequented 
by people, these thoughts from other people sweep 
through our mental bodies as if they were our own, 
and their general trend is for us evil rather than good. 
Many a thought-form of sickness is thus gathered up, 
when we allow our minds to drift and our bodies to 
become negative. When in a general gathering of 
people, one should hold the mind positive by actively 
sending out some helpful uplifting thought for their 
good. 

Positive purity of thought is then the first con- 
sideration in healing by thought- forms. The second 



THOUGHT-FORMS AND COLOR 99 

is physiological knowledge. The question may be 
asked why, if the processes of cure are invisible, should 
a study of anatomy and physiology be necessary? 
For this reason : The physical body and sense organs 
are built in physical matter on the exact pattern of a 
model first built by invisible builders in etheric mat- 
ter. Those who have suffered loss of teeth or limb, 
have had the consciousness that the missing part was 
still in its proper place ; and this because the astral 
etheric counterpart was still in its own place in the 
etheric model, although the physical substance was 
gone. If, then, you know the anatomy and the physi- 
ology of the physical part you want to affect, you pro- 
duce by the thought, in etheric thought matter, a pic- 
ture of that injured part, in a perfectly healthy con- 
dition. "By your thought you make a picture, a form, 
of what that part ought to be. Having thus created 
the picture, you proceed to imagine it into the place 
where the injury is, and by that means, bringing the 
thought to bear on the exact spot, you stimulate the 
recuperative powers of the body to perform swiftly, 
what otherwise they would perform slowly; to build 
up quickly in the injured tissue what otherwise they 
would only build very gradually. " * And in all these 
cases, you must do it day after day, just because you 
cannot yet perform instantaneous cures, but can only 
hasten the normal workings of nature. 

It does not need a very high power of clairvoyance 
to see one's own thoughts. Each thought sent out 
can be seen by the sender as a temporary cloud of 
color, with or without a special form according to the 

* Australian Lectures, by Annie Besant, p. 99. 



100 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

definiteness of the thought, focused at a point about 
twelve inches in front of and level with the face. If 
it is simply a passing thought, one which has not yet 
established a habit of recurrence, there will be but a 
mere flitting cloud of color of the shade correspond- 
ing to the nature of the thought. If it be a thought 
that has been pondered over long and often, it will 
take at once a very definite form, and the color of the 
clothing essence will be more brilliant. 

Those who can thus see, have one means of great 
help toward accomplishing the purification of their 
own mental bodies. 

Seeing a muddy, sickly color standing out in the 
aura, they know that it is there because of some 
thought passing, or but just passed, through the mind. 
Tracing back, the thought is found, and shaken out, 
by the substitution of a pure and lofty thought in its 
place. After a more or less lengthy series of repeti- 
tions of this, that form of thought is overcome. 

Healing with thought-forms of color is being used 
in a certain class of cases. Knowing the tempera- 
ment of the patient, and noting the excess or lack of 
elemental essence, and what type is needed to restore 
harmony, the healer can relieve by means of the ap- 
propriate thought-form of color. In this also, the 
clean and calm mind is essential to the cure ; the calm 
mind that the vibrations reaching the patient may be 
rhythmic, and a clean mind to attract a highly evolved 
class of elemental essence. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MAGNETISM 

The terms Magnetism and Vitality are often used 
interchangeably, but this is an error. Vitality is an 
etheric element, drawn from the Sun, through the 
etheric counterpart of the spleen. The etheric body 
feeds upon this element (vitality), and so builds up 
and repairs the gross physical body. Vitality is as 
necessary to us as the air we breathe, or the food we 
eat. It is this fluid which keeps up the constant cir- 
culation of etheric matter along the nerves, correspond- 
ing to the circulation of blood through the arteries 
and veins; and as oxygen is conveyed by the blood to 
all parts of the body, so vitality is conveyed along 
the nerves by this etheric current.* 

Now, Magnetism is not Vitality, nor is it what we 
commonly speak of as electricity. Magnetism is a 
life-force, generated within one's own Self, The mag- 
netic healer by an effort of the will, generates within 
himself a great deal of this magnetism, and throws it 
into the subject, pushing back the patient's etheric 
nerve fluid, and temporarily filling the place with his 
own. The outflow may be increased or diminished 
somewhat by the will, and it is colored with the good 
or evil tendencies of the healer, and so affects help- 
fully or injuriously all people within its radius. If 
* The Hidden Side of Things, Vol. I, p. 64. Leadbeater, 
IOI 



102 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

the healer charges these magnetic radiations with love, 
sympathy, strength, self-reliance, harmony, then by 
the very law of radiation the essence of those virtues 
interpenetrate and help the body to which it is sent. 

Magnetism, then, being an essence connected with 
the life, rather than with the form, cannot be meas- 
ured or weighed as a remedy, but the results are 
plainly apparent in physical healing as the following 
case will illustrate. The gentleman was not a pro- 
fessional healer, but was well read in Anatomy, and 
had studied much on healing lines. 

He says : "My sister was very ill and as the result 
of an examination we were tolchthat an operation for 
Hysterectomy was imperative. The operation was per- 
formed by one of the best surgeons in the country 
with three physicians and two trained nurses in at- 
tendance. The exploratory incision revealed a condi- 
tion far worse than was expected, so much so that 
the surgeon hesitated to perform the operation, saying 
she could never live through it, but our family physi- 
cian insisted that it be done as arranged for. The op- 
eration was performed under protest. For three days 
and nights my sister gradually sank, and on the fourth 
the doctors gave up all hope of saving her, and she 
herself had no hope. 

"At this time I said to her, T want you to do just 
as I say, and everything will be all right.' I had the 
nurse get water as hot as the patient could drink, and 
had her take all she could. She soon vomited, and 
within a few minutes she felt ready to sleep. The 
first obstacle I met with was that every time she tried 
to get out of the body in sleep, she would take the 



MAGNETISM IO3 

etheric physical with her, and in a moment would 
come back into the body with such a shock as to mo- 
mentarily stop the heart action. I sat beside her and 
told her to go right to sleep again. After two un- 
successful attempts, on the third, she went into a 
sound sleep for nearly five hours, during part of which 
time my treatment was given. 

"There was no hypnotic thought used in the case. 
I called myself within myself, and became at perfect 
peace within and without, realizing that the channel 
made between myself and the deva builders whose 
work it is to rebuild the bodies, would bring the heal- 
ing life down through them, through me, to the pa- 
tient. 

"I had their assistance from that moment as I 
helped them with the pure forces of Nature to build 
new material into the broken body, and so the turn- 
ing point from death to life was passed. " (Here fol- 
lows a description of the treatment given with his 
own hands, recognizing positive and negative in their 
movements as he sent the force through the great 
nerve plexuses of the body.) "When she awakened 
she was perfectly refreshed and free from pain. From 
that time there was a steady improvement, so that at 
the end of two weeks the nurse was allowed to go. 
The surgeon and the doctor were so surprised at the 
change in the case that they could scarcely believe that 
it was true. 

"Some time later our family physician asked me 
for an outline of my treatment, and of how the etheric 
body acted, and how it had to be brought back so that 
it would stay with the physical, the anaesthetic having 



104 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

weakened the link between it and the physical* In 
a few days he came to me and said: 'I have a case 
at the hospital in the same condition that your sister 
was, and if she cannot be relieved I am going to lose 
her.' I told him I would do what I could, and did so. 
At his next visit to his patient he found her much im- 
proved." 

The description of the gentleman's own personal im- 
pressions in the matter is illuminating: "In addition 
to making myself a channel for the forces, I was per- 
mitted to experience in my own consciousness the part 
/ was taking in the treatment, and to guide and direct 
the work done ; this reality of the inner activities was 
much more real than the physical work I was doing. 
I became so absorbed in the workings of my own 
consciousness. and the activities of the inner planes, 
that the physical was lost sight of. None of this was 
done through clairvoyance of any kind that I know 
of. It all seemed to be done through intuition/' 

Here we have the magnetism, the self -generated 
power of the man himself, coming as a great healing 
energy directed through his own super-physical con- 
sciousness out through his hands, and this made a 
mighty channel for the Healing Life. Such a super- 
power, sent out through the tips of the fingers into 
the great nerve centers of the patient's body could be 
likened to the use of an X or N-ray upon them as 
compared to ordinary magnetic manipulation. Hence 
its enormously increased power. 

It is interesting to note the preparation which he 
made ; that by "calling myself within myself" he grad- 
* The Hidden Side of Things, Vol. I, p. 341. Leadbeater. 



MAGNETISM 105 

ually raised his consciousness by methods familiar to 
the occultist, to a point where the magnetic forces 
were not only of a higher, a superior order, but they 
rayed out through finer matter with what may be 
termed, for the moment for lack of a better term, 
cosmical light. 

Again, the fact of the existence of an etheric body, 
which forms the connecting link between the physical 
and the astral body, and so its severance from the 
physical meant death to it, was apparent to even the 
family doctor, as also that it could be controlled. The 
astral and mental bodies also have their etheric doubles, 
and ether links them all together. 

Magnetized water has not been explained upon any 
purely physical basis, therefore it has been set aside 
as unscientific, and the cures made by it have been 
frequently derided, covered up or denied. But the 
cures continue. Many instances are on record. We 
have previously referred to the Biblical record, of 
the angel stepping down into the pool periodically, for 
the healing of the people. In the school of Nancy 
and the Hospital San Salpetriere, in France, water 
under many experiments has been found to be a spe- 
cial conveyor of magnetism. Sir Frederick Treves, 
of London, has discovered a cure for sclerosis of 
the arteries in "radium" water, and cases on both 
sides of the Atlantic attest its virtues. The recent re- 
opening of the discussion in regard to the healing 
power of the water at Lourdes, France, offers a proof 
that occult healings of this nature are coming to the 
front for consideration. Many springs of so-called 
sacred water, due to their healing virtues, have been 



106 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

found in centuries past. Some in America, located 
by American Indians, still maintain their good repute. 
So far as known to us the cures from these Ameri- 
can springs are progressive. 

In the cases of the apparently fully-attested cures 
at Lourdes, the novelist Zola, himself a sceptic, was 
an eye witness to astounding instantaneous cures; 
cases which he saw entering the spring, with diseased 
lungs, broken legs, dislocated joints, and terrible 
cancers, came out of the water well, fully restored to 
health. Zola, commenting on the claim of the priests 
who said it was done by God, said there could be 
but one source, and that was "the only Mother, serene 
and impassive Nature. " So again, in modern times, 
Nature, as the outer expression of the One, in the 
role of Health Intelligence, in command of all power 
to heal by any agency, is being recognized. Now, al- 
though the waters of the Lourdes spring are said 
to show on ordinary chemical analysis only common 
water, yet such chemical analysis cannot reasonably 
be considered fully conclusive unless it has included a 
very definite and accurate test for "radium/' or still 
finer elements. 

The question arises whether, in any healing water, 
there may not be etheric, or X and N powers, which 
when aroused into activity by some powerful mag- 
netizer, seen or unseen, will reach the subtle etheric 
body of the patient and accomplish the cure. It 
is not impossible that such etheric vibrations passing 
out as X or N ray waves could in a moment's time 
cure otherwise incurable diseases. 

Who will, with open mind, investigate such healing 



MAGNETISM 107 

springs to find if radium, with its etheric electronic 
potential acting as a channel for the healing power, 
may be hidden there in the ethers of the waters, and 
which acts as a conveyor of the Health Life to 
sufferers? The forces of magnetism are as yet 
obscure and scarcely glimpsed. They seem to be 
identical with Ojas, which in Hindu books is described 
as "the essence of strength, of vigor, of energy, of 
virility, of power. It is radiant and full of light. 
Through ten etheric ducts attached to the heart, it is 
carried to every part of the body. Without it, the 
life of all creatures would become extinct." 

An interesting occurrence in connection with heal- 
ing by magnetized water is here cited. Others of like 
nature have come to our notice. 

"I discovered that I possessed remarkable healing 
powers, and realized that I could relieve pain and 
cure disease by magnetizing water ; or, in other words, 
could impart to the water the healing properties that 
the person needed and so heal in that manner. In 

I went to Michigan. While there I looked 

astrally after such patients as needed my care. I 
went in this way to a friend in Philadelphia and 
found her ill in bed. I was seen by her and two 
others who were in the room with her. I asked for 
water and a bottle of it was brought to me. I mag- 
netized the water, gave her a dose, and then bottled 
up the balance and told them how to administer it. 
She quickly recovered. This occurrence was later 
attested to by those present. 



CHAPTER XV 

MESMERISM 

Perhaps the most distinguished investigator and 
exponent of Mesmerism since the days of Mesmer 
himself (1733) was Colonel H. S. Olcott, joint 
Founder with Madame Blavatsky, and until his death 
President of the Theosophical Society. The circum- 
stances connected with his healing work are still quite 
within the memory of many. For three years, from 
1880 to 1883, Colonel Olcott used this power, and 
during the time treated, according to the record, some 
seven thousand people. Many of the cases were at- 
tested to both before and after cure and many wit- 
nesses and beneficiaries are still living. 

His work was led up to in this way. While the 
Colonel was on a lecture tour in Ceylon the Buddhist 
High Priest told him that the Roman Catholic clergy 
were preparing to establish a healing shrine or holy 
well there. The Colonel replied that the Buddhists 
ought to do the same, and that he, the High Priest, 
should cure the people in the name of the Lord 
Buddha, and urged that it be done, for his firm con- 
viction was that the healing power was not limited to 
sects in religion, nor to schools of medicine. Shortly 
after this conversation a man afflicted with paralysis 
was introduced to the Colonel, and something seemed 

108 



MESMERISM I(X) 

to say to him: ''Here is your chance for the making 
of a shrine to the Lord Buddha/' 

Having made a study of Mesmeric Healing in his 
earlier years, though never practicing it, he offered 
to treat the man, and did so with great success. This 
was the beginning of his three years of healing. 
Colonel Olcott's personal attitude was utterly against 
the taking of pay for cures. We cite one of his cases 
to illustrate that and other points. 

A man suffering from paralysis of one side was 
brought to him to be healed. He restored the arm 
to its normal use again, and sat down to rest before 
working on the paralyzed leg. While resting, the 
Buddhist Committee, which was selecting the cases 
for him to treat, told him that the patient was well 
to do; that he had spent 1,500 rupees on doctors 
without getting relief. He was avaricious, well known 
for his closeness. "Now, of all things that are dis- 
gusting to the occultist," writes the Colonel in Old 
Diary Leaves," money greed is one of the chief; it is 
so low and ignoble a passion. My feelings underwent 
an instant change toward the patient. The Committee 
at my suggestion asked him for money for the Bud- 
dhist Fund, and he said that, as he was a poor man, 
he would give one rupee. I told the Committee to 
take the man away and never let me see him again. 
But the Committee urged me to continue the case as 
my refusal would be misunderstood, so after a while 
I had the patient brought to me and within half an 
hour had released his leg from its state of paralysis, 
and sent the man away walking as well as anyone. 

"Some weeks later, returning to the same town in 



IIO PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

the course of my tour, inquiring for some of the 
patients I had been particularly interested in, I men- 
tioned the miser. The reply surprised me very much. 
The arm, they said, remained cured, but the leg had 
relapsed into the paralytic state. Although I had read 
of no similar case in Mesmerism (which was the name 
the Colonel gave to his treatment), the reason sug- 
gested itself at once — I had felt no real sympathy for 
the man after hearing about his miserliness, and there- 
fore my vital aura had not vibrated along the nerves 
of his leg as it had been applied to the nerves of his 
arm, so the cure was but temporary. In both treat- 
ments I had had exactly the same knowledge of the 
science, and the same measure of vital force to trans- 
mit, but in the latter, none of that feeling of sympathy 
and benevolent intent which, in the case of the arm 
resulted in a permanent cure." 

Colonel Olcott gives some most helpful suggestions 
upon the permanence of cure. He says the patient 
was treated while in full possession of his senses. He 
could not understand a word of English, and must 
have been doubly sure in his own mind that as his 
arm was cured, his leg must certainly be. Even the 
surrounding audience knew nothing of these methods, 
and consequently were not able to hypnotically sug- 
gest anything to the patient. Finally he concludes his 
philosophizing on his failure to cure this Ceylon case 
by saying that it powerfully suggests the truth of the 
ancient teaching, that kind thoughts sent out from one 
to another carry with them an almost magical power 
for good, while evil ones have the contrary effect. 

Colonel Olcott, in trying to determine the source of 



MESMERISM III 

his power, makes two suggestions. First, that the 
healing was done through him by a higher intelligence 
than his (a Master of Wisdom), and cites the case 
of a patient he was treating named Badrinath, who 
was blind from atrophy of the optic disc, and declared 
incurable by the greatest surgeons. While the 
Colonel was treating his eyes, upon which work he 
was closely concentrated, "Badrinath suddenly began 
describing a shining man whom he, though blind, 
clairvoyantly saw looking benevolently on him. From 
the minute description he proceeded to give me, I 
could not fail to recognize the portrait of one of the 
most revered of our Theosophical Masters, a fact that 
was the more delightful in its being so unexpected 
and so independent of any mental direction on my 
own part, my mind being wholly fixed on the treatment 
I was giving."* 

The second suggestion of the Colonel was that per- 
haps the healing was done through the transfusion of 
his own vitality to the patient. Without doubt such 
transfusion may have contributed to his success, for 
a feeble devitalized person could not have done such 
work, but that would not account for all the phe- 
nomena, for the vitality of even healthy people has 
its limitations. The etheric portion of the physical 
body is the vehicle of vitality; this vitality may be 
directed at will to a person, or it may be tapped, so 
to say, by certain types of people. When not under 
any special control, it simply radiates in all directions, 
flowing out chiefly through the hands. Many minor 
diseases can be cured by increasing the circulation of 

* Old Diary Leaves, by H. S. Olcott, Vol. II, pp. 431-2. 



112 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

the vitality of the patient; "A headache, for example, 
is frequently due either to a slight congestion of the 
blood-vessels, or to a similar congestion of the vital 
fluid in the etheric vessels. In either case, a clair- 
voyant who can see the obstruction may deal with it 
by sending a strong current through the head and 
washing away the congested matter. A man who 
cannot so see can also produce this result, but since 
he does not know exactly where to direct this force, 
he generally wastes a great deal of it."f 

It seems possible to trace a distinction between Mes- 
merism and Magnetism here. In ordinary Mesmerism 
vitality, the health force from the sun's rays, flows 
through the etheric portion of the physical body, and 
is directed by the will of the healer to the diseased 
part. In Magnetism the healer raises his conscious- 
ness to a higher level, as in the Colonel's case, to the 
thought of the Great Master, and there, on that higher 
level the force is poured out through him, and he 
becomes a channel for the Health-Life. The con- 
ditions accompanying some of Colonel Olcott's cures 
seem to indicate that he sometimes radiated both 
Vitality and Magnetism, and in special cases was aided 
by some very advanced intelligences. 

t The Inner Life, by C. W. Leadbeater, Vol. II, p. 180. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE HEALING MIRACLES OF THE CHRIST 

For nearly two thousand years the miracles of the 
Christ have been the source of great theological con- 
troversies ; and among materialists, the cause of the 
most outspoken incredulity. Evolution furnishes us 
with an argument in favor of their truth. If the un- 
folding of spirit and the refining of matter are facts 
in consciousness and matter, in other words, if evolu- 
tion be true, then, as Professor Huxley has said, there 
must be those as far beyond us as we are beyond the 
black beetle. If, owing to His advanced place in evo- 
lution, to His Supreme Self-Sacrifice, to His bound- 
less Compassion, the Christ, called in India the Lord 
Maitreya, if He possessed in His Own right and as 
an outcome of ages of evolution, the full knowledge 
of and the power to use the seven forces in Nature, 
then may we use evolution to explain His dealings 
with the sick bodies. His work was not super- 
natural, but it was superphysical as well as physical; 
it was not limited to purely sense knowledge, but it 
dealt with the finer bodies equally. He had absolute 
knowledge of the person to be healed, whether it was 
a physical ailment, or an immoral life, or a life-long 
infirmity the cause of which had been set in motion 
in past lives. Such cures were not miracles, not 

113 



114 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

unique facts without law or reason to explain them, 
but resulted from the possession of occult knowledge, 
such as we must all have in time as a result of 
evolution. 

Three facts force themselves upon us as we study 
the healings recorded of the Christ. 

First: That he had absolute knowledge of the 
patient's inner life, and control of the power to cure 
him. 

Second : That every cure was instantaneous. 

Third: That faith on the part of the patient or 
those bringing him was required. 

They brought to the Christ a man sick of the palsy, 
lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, He said unto the 
man, Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven 
thee. And the Christ, knowing the thoughts of some 
in the multitude, answered them by saying: Why 
think ye evil in your hearts? But that ye may know 
that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins (He said to the sick man), Arise, take up thy 
bed and go unto thine house. And he arose, and 
departed to his house.* 

Here is exemplified, first, the faith of those who 
brought the man ; second, instantaneous cure ; third, 
full knowledge of the man's past life ; that it had been 
sinful was implied in his own words. 

Again : There came a leper and worshipped Him, 
saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. 
And Christ put forth His hand and touched him, 
saying: I will; be thou clean. Go thy way, shew 
thyself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses 

* St. Matt., IX, 2-7. 



THE HEALING MIRACLES OF THE CHRIST II5 

commanded as a testimony. f Here the faith of the 
man fairly overflowed, so great and strong was it. 
But also the Christ reminded him of the Law laid 
down by the father of his race, that to perfect and 
complete his own part in the cure he must bring a 
gift-offering to the priest of the Temple. 

And there came to Him a centurion, saying : Lord, 
I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my 
roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall 
be healed. And when the Christ heard this, He said 
to His followers : Verily, I say unto you, I have 
not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And He 
turned to the centurion and said, Go thy way ; and as 
thou has believed, so be it done unto thee. And the 
servant was healed in the self-same hour.* 

Let it be noted that the Christ did not need the 
faith as an offering to Himself ; it was an element 
required as a part of the asking. The one who asks 
for help for himself or for another must have faith. 
Why was faith so important? Why not some other 
quality? Is faith the innermost link with the healing 
force, with the healer, with the Masters of Wisdom, 
with God Himself ? What is faith ? 

And behold there was a man with his hand with- 
ered, and He said unto him : Stretch forth thine 
hand. The action of obediently stretching forth im- 
plied faith. He conformed and immediately it was 
restored whole as the other. J 

And there came to Him a certain man, kneeling 

tlbid., VIII, 3-4. 

* St. Matt., VIII, 6-13. 

t Ibid, XII, 13. 



Il6 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

down to Him, saying, Lord, help my son; he is a 
lunatic, extremely destructive, and I brought him to 
thy disciples and they could not cure him. And the Christ 
turned to his disciples and answered, O faithless, how 
long shall I suffer you ? Bring him to Me. And He said 
to the father: If thou canst believe, all things are pos- 
sible. And the father replied, Lord, I believe. Help 
Thou my unbelief. And He rebuked the devil in the 
child, and it departed out of him, and the child was 
cured from that hour. And the disciples came to 
Him privately and asked: Why could we not cast 
him out ? And the Christ replied : Because of your 
unbelief. I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain 
of mustard seed, nothing shall be impossible unto you.t 

What, then, is this all important faith factor in the 
one who comes, or in those who bring the patient for 
this deeply occult and instantaneous healing? 

St. Paul says of faith that it "is the substance of 
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 
"The substance of things hoped for." From this we 
may infer that whatever the thing is that is hoped for, 
it has a form of material substance through which it 
expresses itself as hope. But, in what substance can 
a "hope" take form? Again, we are thrown back 
upon the halo type of matter, the inexhaustible ether 
in man's three bodies, in which can be, is built — as 
photography is now beginning to demonstrate — our 
hopes, our fears, our joyful aspirations and sorrowful 
glooms. Each of these various types of thoughts and 
emotions, according to occult science, builds itself a 
form of its own vibratory kind, of the appropriate 

t Ibid., XVII, 14-20, 



THE HEALING MIRACLES OF THE CHRIST II7 

elemental essence in the ethers, and these thought- 
forms can be seen, are seen sometimes, even by 
untrained students. 

Paracelsus speaks of faith yet more plainly. "If I 
know that divine Wisdom can accomplish a certain 
thing through me, I have true faith ; if I merely be- 
lieve that it might be possible, such a belief is no 
knowledge, and confers no faith. Faith renders the 
spirit strong; doubt is the destroyer. Faith is the 
inner consciousness of power." 

Here we can see that doubt may be spoken of as the 
negative pole of faith. Doubt does not concentrate 
energy into building a health image ; it scatters, it 
causes chaos in the "substance." 

Cardinal Newman says of faith, that "while it is 
illuminative, it is not operative; it bestows light — it 
does not impart power." Perhaps the power to make 
it operative is the aroused alertness of the man himself 
which, if such alertness is lying dormant, furnishes no 
connection between faith and its opposite, and though 
existent, faith will then remain inoperative. 

From these testimonies we may gather that faith 
belongs to the realm of the oversoul; that it is of the 
nature of spirit, that it is not an objective sense 
process, but is deeply subjective, being of the substance 
of the essence of the spiritual nature. It does not 
pertain to doctrines, but is a superphysical element in 
consciousness, which requires that an energized etheric 
thought form of health shall be supplied by the patient 
or by those bringing him, together with a full convic- 
tion that the cure is accomplished as soon as the Word 
is spoken. 



Il8 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

Faith would seem to be as yet latent, potential in 
the majority of humanity. It would appear to have 
its basis in that stage of evolution when doubt of the 
existence of superphysical activities has to a large 
degree been overcome, and knowledge has taken its 
place. 

We will attempt to add another definition to those 
already offered and say that Faith is the Word Symbol 
for the instantaneous wholeness of realization of an 
absolute fact, of an unshakeable certainty. In other 
words, Faith as exemplified in healing, means that the 
whole inner and outer being, the mind, the emotions, 
the heart, is filled with an immovable conviction of a 
Superhuman power that will, and can, and is, accom- 
plishing the end it seeks, and the whole nature is 
swathed in the peace of it. Those who have this 
faith can become true healers. 

And blind Bartimeus sat by the highway begging 
and when he heard that it was the Christ who was 
coming, he began to cry out: Son of David, have 
mercy upon me. The people tried to quiet him, but 
all the more he cried: Have mercy upon me. And 
the Christ stood still and commanded the man to be 
brought and said: What wilt thou that I should do 
unto thee? And the blind man said: Lord, that I 
receive my sight. And the Christ said : Go thy way. 
Thy faith has made thee whole; and immediately he 
received his sight, and followed him.* 

It is not difficult to imagine that for years the desire 
for sight, and a thought image of himself as possessing 
it, had been the continual secret cry of the blind man's 

* St. Mark, X, 46-52. 



THE HEALING MIRACLES OF THE CHRIST II9 

soul, and hearing of the healing work of the Christ, 
he knew that he could be cured if he could only reach 
Him, He needed but to be told of His near approach, 
to have his faith brought into active use; to have a 
wholeness of realisation instantaneously established 
through the I am consciousness and its bodies, in- 
stantly polarizing the atomic etheric centers of the 
sightless eyes, and making it possible by the aid of the 
power of the Christ, for the fullness of the Health 
Life to flow in through them, vitalizing them with per- 
fect health. Can we, with the explanations that have 
preceded this, get a glimpse of some of the processes 
of instantaneous cure? 

Etheric vibrations are now scientifically established 
as being beyond the normal physical. Recognizing all 
the other factors as having their part in the cure, we 
may reasonably assume that these super-etheric vibra- 
tions affect and control for the time with their own 
tremendously higher activity, all the matter within 
their own radius ; and under the impetus of the word 
of the Christ they would crowd into the physical and 
etheric sight centers all the electronic matter needed, 
and would throw out, shake out with equal instan- 
taneousness all effete, inert, obstructive matter. Be- 
cause of this higher vibratory action temporarily 
aroused, and responded to in the physical atoms and 
molecules, there would be seen from our dense phys- 
ical viewpoint, an instantaneous cure, a so-called 
miracle. But seen from the etheric viewpoint, such 
instantaneousness would be its normal mode of motion. 

To show that this is not an improbable view, we 
will apply to it Sir J. J. Thompson's statement regard- 



120 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

ing positive electricity,* in which, speaking of the posi- 
tive-ray method of detecting particles called corpuscles 
or electrons, he says : that the time taken by a particle 
to pass from the discharge tube and be registered on 
the photographic plate is far less than the millionth 
part of a second. He further states that the positive 
rays are deflected by magnetic forces. Now the posi- 
tive rays exist everywhere in ether, and under the law 
of attraction will deflect toward the strongest magnet. 
If that magnet should be a human faith or an angel 
helper, then instantaneous polarization would take 
place and the Health Life would flow in, instantly. 
The more advanced the stage of evolution of the pa- 
tient, the more potent the power of the helper, as 
illustrated by the great healing work of the Christ. 

Then, if the Healing Intelligences were working in 
the etheric, the root matter of the bodies, restoring or 
replacing diseased bone, muscle, nerve, they could by 
the multiplication of electronic discharges at the point 
of disease, throw out, push out the old matter and 
replace it with the new, and suitably selected health- 
charged material; the cure to ordinary sight would 
seem instantaneous and miraculous and yet would but 
be the natural action of definitely health-charged elec- 
trons in etheric matter. 

When we look out over the world and see its im- 
mensity, and its helplessness under its weight of pain, 
then we realize that only a great leader, a World 
Teacher, a Divine Healer, such as the Christ, can 
Himself administer relief to all and teach us true 
methods. As Mrs. Annie Besant has said, we need a 

* Harpers Magazine, September, 1914, 



THE HEALING MIRACLES OF THE CHRIST 121 

leader, one greater than ourselves who, seeing these 
mighty problems of world pain that to us now are 
insoluble, will point us to the road along which we 
may walk to their solution. 

And when He, the Christ, shall come again, as He 
has promised, He will teach us, if we are worthy, the 
higher mysteries of healing. 



CHAPTER XVII 

A BASIS FOR A SCIENTIFIC WORKING HYPOTHESIS WHICH 
WILL INCLUDE ALL CURES 

We have endeavored to make clear that, underlying 
all possibilities of healing, there should be found ulti- 
mate Laws or Principles of Health and Healing which, 
when understood, will enable us to differentiate, study 
and classify every type of cure, each under its own 
law. 

Science is extending its researches into "ultra" mat- 
ter on a basis of unclassified facts ; it has gathered 
series of results which, while not yet scientifically 
tabulated — and cannot be until more is known — justify 
hypotheses concerning the electron and the electrical 
theory of matter, and N and ultra-violet rays. In 
equal manner, also, do the existing facts of healing by 
drugs, by polarization, by the aid of planetary ele- 
mental essence, by faith, by intermediation of angel 
helpers, by prayer, by the power of the Higher Self 
upon its three bodies, justify an hypothesis as to their 
source, and methods of expression. The drugless and 
the instantaneous cures contain strong evidence that 
they are temporary manifestations of the super-powers 
of a permanent, living Law of Nature, the Law of 
Health. The facts of super-aid, as well as drug-aid 
in healing, are facts ; facts which indicate that Health 
has a definite source and that it exists eternally ; that 
it uses both visible and invisible agencies ; that some of 

122 



SCIENTIFIC WORKING HYPOTHESIS I23 

these agencies appear transcendent or super-physical 
to us, because of our own ignorance ; also that the law 
will unfold its hidden secrets to those who faithfully 
study its workings. 

The evidence indicates that all of these Health 
powers, physical and super-physical powers, exist 
eternally within the scope of the Health law, and are 
under the direction of its intelligent administrators, 
the Shining Ones ; but they only manifest to the per- 
ception of the physical senses as each man's own evo- 
lutionary need calls them out. For there is no waste 
in the administering of laws of Nature; but, as in the 
physical manifestation of the ultra-violet and the N 
rays, so with the ultra cases of healing. The power 
seems to be mainly non-existent, or to be spasmodic 
and variable, because it does not appear within the 
sphere of physical consciousness except when its own 
proper conditions and need for manifestation are 
present. 

What separated points have we now discussed 
which, put together, will help to prove that all types 
of cures are subject to, or are accomplished under, 
fixed laws, and that therefore they can be scientifically 
investigated ? 

First. Matter. 

(a) Grades of Matter. The fact of the existence 
of different grades of matter is no longer questioned. 
Nor do scientists entertain any doubt that the several 
types of matter, solids, liquids, gases and ethers enter 
into the composition of each human body. Western 
science admits that each atom of every grade of mat- 
ter floats in and is surrounded by Ether; that Ether 



124 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

is the finest grade of matter known, but little has been 
learned concerning it. 

Occultism — ancient divine science — clearly states 
that every atom lives in its own world enveloped by 
ether; the sense of hearing, for instance, though re- 
garded as the result of vibrations of air, "is carried on 
through the medium of the ether which surrounds the 
particles. It is Ether as the Root of Matter, which 
gives to the senses their feeling of reality. " From the 
standpoint of Occultism, all grades of matter inter- 
penetrate throughout space, but in human bodies these 
grades are organized by the Self, for the use of the 
Self, into interpenetrating but separate vehicles, as the 
physical body, the astral, or desire-emotion body, the 
mental body ; as evolution advances, each of these 
bodies is rebuilt, again and again, by the Self, of the 
finer and purer matter of its grade. 

(b) Rates of Vibrations. It is common knowledge 
that the vibratory limits of the three lower grades, 
solids, liquids and gases, differ, the vibrations being 
more rapid in liquids than in solids, and still higher in 
gases. Such observations as have been made on 
human bodies indicate that diseases of phlegm (liquid) 
— as tuberculosis — are much slower in vibratory action, 
run longer courses and recover more slowly than those 
of gases or heat, such as fevers. 

As to Ether, the statement of Sir J. J. Thompson, 
previously quoted, proves that the electrons — which 
are etheric in their nature — move with almost incon- 
ceivable rapidity. If then the relief of any form of 
disease should be secured through the ethers, the rea- 
sonable inference is that it would be done with an 



SCIENTIFIC WORKING HYPOTHESIS 125 

instantaneousness corresponding to the vibratory swift- 
ness of etheric matter. 

(c) Ether the Coming Element. An occult state- 
ment previously quoted says of Ether that it is the 
coming — the fifth — element; that it is semi-material as 
yet, indicating that, as with air, fire, water, earth, vast 
periods of time passed before they, under their own 
evolutionary laws, came out of their occult, their hid- 
den state, and became gradually materialized, so with 
ether. It is still hidden in large measure, whether we 
seek to observe its working in the cosmos or in human 
bodies ; but by analogy we can see that as air, fire and 
water has each its own special method of working, and 
its particular function to perform in human bodies, so 
will Ether have its own methods in them. One char- 
acteristic to recognize it by will be the instantaneous- 
ness with which the cure is accomplished. 

Second. Life. 

(a) Life moves Matter. We now turn to the life 
side of spirit-matter to find its relation to healing. 
Ether, as with all other grades of matter, can never be 
but very partially studied unless its life side, its essen- 
tial activity as spirit-matter, is recognized. Occultism 
teaches that "while Nature, which is Divine Matter, 
provides all the mechanism for activity, it is Life, 
which is Divine Spirit, that sets going and directs that 
mechanism. " The mechanism of matter cannot oper- 
ate of itself, nor can Life manifest without the aid of 
substance ; spirit-matter, these two poles of Divine 
Energy are dependent each upon the other for mani- 
festation. 

(b) Life limited by Matter. Under the explana- 



126 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

tion of a law of planetary elemental essence which has 
an intelligence all its own, and which is graded accord- 
ing to its own stage of evolution, the theory of a con- 
nective, collective life in every atom and molecule of 
matter is no longer speculative ; any matter which can 
manifest adhesion, affinity, repulsion, can sense heat 
and cold, can respond to and be overcome by poisons, 
can show definite symptoms of fatigue and illness, has 
an element of life and health existing in it which must 
be dealt with as intelligence in matter, whether that 
matter be of earth, water, air, fire or ether. This life 
carries on its evolutionary work under deva direction, 
in mineral, plant and animal, under immense limita- 
tions. So great are these limitations that we speak of 
the life in these three grades or planes of matter as 
sub-conscious life, meaning below human conscious- 
ness. It should not then be expected that the drugs 
of these three kingdoms could have more than a pro- 
gressive place in healing. 

In the human being, while the sub-conscious ele- 
mental essence carries on its own proper activities in 
the cells of the bodies, a Higher Life, the Self, the 
individualizing Ego, the Monad, enters as informer 
and eventual Ruler, and in time will dominate the 
bodies and subject them to its own higher aspirations. 

(c) Life discriminates. But whether the life be 
embodied in mineral, plant, animal, man, lower or 
higher angels, or the Lord of the Universe, it is the 
same Divine Life, except in degree of manifestation. 
The finer the matter and the greater the power of 
vibratory response of the elemental essence in it, the 
loftier the Intelligence which can use it. 



SCIENTIFIC WORKING HYPOTHESIS 127 

It is reasonable, then, to infer that the higher types 
of matter, such as ether, are largely dormant in healing 
until the human stage is reached ; and even then the 
man who has not passed the selfish animal desire stage 
and has not set in motion the forces of will which 
awaken to conscious activity the elemental essence in 
his yet inchoate etheric bodies, will be unlikely to 
experience an instantaneous cure; the higher intelli- 
gences would not, probably, under the law of the con- 
servation of energy, act in such cases. Slow drug 
work fulfils the necessary purpose at that stage of 
evolution. 

But the unselfish, Self-controlled, compassionate per- 
son, whose only desire is to serve humanity, will, by 
the very purity of the life and purpose, attract the 
attention of the great healing devas, and at the right 
time they, working through the actively operating 
etheric matter, will accomplish the cure. 

Does not the life side of Nature hold the secret of 
Health and Healing which will apply to all cures? 
Have we in the different rates of vibrations in the 
grades of living spirit-matter of the physical, astral 
and mental bodies, and, under the law of evolution, 
all of this gradually becoming controlled by the un- 
folding Self within, found material with which to 
begin to formulate a scientific working hypothesis 
covering every method of cure? 

Etheric matter responds more readily, and offers 
less resistance to the active energies of Life, than 
physical matter. 

Under healing by drugs, different grades of mat- 
ter are used, and according to the stage of evolution 



128 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

of the finer bodies of the patient, and the limitation 
of the power of elemental response in the drug used, 
will be the rapidity of the cure. 

The progressive drugless cure is the intermediate 
stage, the evolutionary step, between the drug cure 
and the instantaneous cure. Here the lower ethers of 
the bodies are beginning to be active and responsive 
to the Higher Self, and the super-intelligences of the 
Health law can begin their manifestation. Many 
people have proved for themselves that physical drugs 
are powerless to restore, when lost, the normal electric 
rhythm of their finer bodies ; and that prayer, music, 
colors, a day in the woods, etc., have acted as health 
restorers. The disturbance is in the etheric matter of 
the bodies and treatment suitable to that grade of 
matter must be given. 

In the instantaneous cure, the ethers of the bodies 
are in a more active condition, are in a more or less 
organized or polarized state. Here we find some ex- 
planation of the functions of Ether, this "Root of 
Matter," this "container of all types and forms.'' It 
being semi-material, "semi" here would mean that it 
is equally as open through its own finer akashic grades 
on its hidden side to the use of the Healing Angels of 
the inner worlds, as its denser grades are open to the 
material remedies of this dense outer side. The finer 
inner grades of living essence offer an immediate 
alertness and an instantaneous response of service to 
the great Intelligences who understand, direct and 
administer the distribution of Health. 

Such an hypothesis, having its basis in ancient and, 
to some extent, in modern science, is not beyond the 



SCIENTIFIC WORKING HYPOTHESIS I29 

comprehension of the intellectual mind. The philo- 
sophic, intuitive mind, which is often clairvoyant, see- 
ing something of the inner truths of things, will grasp 
far more than this ; will see a great world-philosophy 
underlying all healing; will see the plan of the Logos 
of the system slowly working toward an ultimate 
definite goal of perfection for all life. Toward this 
end, all pleasure, all pain, all laws of Nature, tend. 
For this purpose the great Inner-World Teachers 
come forth from time to time, and restore the truth of 
life and brotherhood to an ignorant and bewildered 
humanity. 

The world is passing through a great and swiftly 
moving evolutionary process. It is necessary, in order 
that the Life side of Nature shall now be more fully 
studied ; that an ideal of Brotherhood, that brotherhood 
which is innate in all life, may speedily and indelibly 
be built into the physical brain and heart consciousness, 
as well as into the soul of humanity. From the stand- 
point of Health, a finer type of bodies will soon be 
brought down by the great Builders for humanity's 
use. In these the sense faculties of the three bodies 
will be active, as they even now are in a few of our 
present race. The Great Ones, the Elder Brothers of 
humanity, who on invisible planes are bringing about 
the new conditions, have the wisdom and the power 
to heal as none have done since the Christ was here 
before, and when He and They come forth They will 
explain and teach as none can now do, the true Law 
of Health. Let us hold our minds open to perceive 
the Truth. 



ADDENDA 

A STUDY OF THE REPORT OF THE CLERICAL AND MEDICAL 
COMMITTEE OF LONDON, ENGLAND 

This Committee, since 1910, has been conducting 
"an Inquiry into Spiritual, Faith and Mental Healing/' 
and in 1914 issued a Report which contains points of 
much interest. Especially is it of interest when viewed 
in the light of facts set forth in this little book. We 
take pleasure in very briefly reviewing the Report here 
for the benefit of our readers. 

The Committee, composed of eminent divines and 
distinguished physicians, prepared seven questions, and 
the examination of the selected witnesses, men of 
equally noted position, was based upon these questions. 

The purpose was to learn what^the witnesses under- 
stood by the term "Spiritual Healing'' ; what were their 
views of the difference, if any, between Spiritual and 
Mental Healing; whether they related present day 
Spiritual Healing to the Gifts of Healing in Apostolic 
times ; whether moral excellence or religious faith on 
the part of the healer or the healed, is a requisite in 
"Spiritual Healing," and, whether in the opinion of the 
witnesses Spiritual Healing should be exercised apart 
from both medical diagnosis and supervision. 

It has been said that any problem, to be truly solved, 
must be viewed from seven standpoints. We offer the 
following as one of these standpoints. That we first 

130 



ADDENDA 131 

need to place Health in its proper category, else we 
cannot determine its relation to natural laws, its meth- 
ods of distribution, and the nature of its powers. Also 
the terms Spiritual, Faith, Mental Healing, need to be 
clearly defined. We have taken the position that 
Health is of the Spirit; that Health being spiritual and 
the polar opposite of disease, Health and disease can 
never meet; therefore, an intermediary of some nature 
is necessary. This, as we have attempted to show, 
is of the nature of a conveyor or channel composed 
of invisible Intelligences, through whom Health flows 
to any given point. By means of these Shining Ones, 
the Health Life is distributed through priests, doctors, 
laymen, drugs, or any of the five elements with their 
elemental essences, or even through or by the means 
of the patient's own higher Self. 

Now, if the doctors, ministers, and the various 
types of healers are not the Health-Life itself, nor 
the disease itself, then they must belong to the third 
factor, they must constitute one part of the channel 
through which, or the instrument by means of which, 
the spiritual Health Life can flow out to the patient. 
This human part of the channel or instrument may or 
may not be "Spiritual. " It ranges from the blinded 
and cabined living elemental essence in the five ele- 
ments and in drugs, up through the various stages of 
awakening consciousness, to the unlimited wisdom of 
divine Beings such as the Christ. Hence it would 
seem that the human part of the channel, as in the 
case of the banks of a stream, approaches the spiritual 
to the degree that it is a perfect channel, not seeking 
to hold, or to profit by any atom of that which flows 



132 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

through, nor to consciously display its own power, 
but to pass on unobstructed the full amount of Health- 
Life needed. From this viewpoint, only those of su- 
perior love and wisdom, absolute knowledge, utter 
unselfishness, boundless sympathy, and oneness with 
the law of God, those in whom the Christ nature is 
fully developed, would be true spiritual healers. Be- 
low this there might be grade upon grade of students. 
The terms Spiritual Healers, Faith Healers, and 
Mental Healers, from this standpoint seem to be mis- 
leading, and possibly the nomenclature should be 
revised. 

Again, if we should place the instantaneous and 
drugless cures such as we have cited, in one class, with 
its higher and lower subdivisions, they could be exam- 
ined under the conditions pertaining to their own 
nature, viz., the conditions of etheric electronic matter. 
The instantaneous and drugless cures would thus be 
lifted out of the drug class, which is related so closely 
to dense physical matter. Such cures will become 
more frequent in the near future, and no legislation, 
or regulation by any body of men can prevent their 
occurrence. They are a result of advancing evolu- 
tion. 

The examination of the instantaneous and drugless 
cases will naturally fall under the -jurisdiction of the 
spiritually advanced, the enlightened expounders of 
the Scriptures, who by the very law of their own 
evolution in their own special line of education, will 
be awakening the higher vision such as was exercised 
by the saintly Apollonius. The cures made with drugs 
or surgery would quite as naturally come under the 



ADDENDA 133 

jurisdiction of the medical men. The very character 
of the cure itself constitutes a classification which 
requires on the one hand special training of religious 
studies and spiritual experiences, and on the other, 
the close following of modern scientific investigations. 
Unless these two widely divergent methods are em- 
bodied in one person, we should not expect a diag- 
nosis of the Holy Spirit's action from a medical man, 
nor a clear understanding of a medical case from a 
minister of the Gospel. 

The cures by "suggestion" cannot, if we have cor- 
rectly defined the spiritual healer, be classed with the 
spiritual work of the Christ. He knew absolutely 
what He did ; there was no guessing, no suggestion, no 
waiting for results in His work. 

In regard to the "Gifts of Healing" as in Apostolic 
times, or a Healing power bestowed by the Holy Spirit 
on any person, the witnesses varied in their beliefs. 
Our own observation is that such power is conferred 
on some, usually temporarily. The healing work of 
the Earl of Sandwich, whose evidence as a witness is 
embodied in the Report, may possibly be of this nature. 
An invisible intelligence or deva may be temporarily 
aiding him ; and yet no consciousness of the nature of 
this aid sifts through into his physical brain. Under 
the views advanced by Professor Bergson, of the lim- 
itations in brain receptivity to mental concepts, such 
physical brain unconsciousness might reasonably exist 
in connection with a definite expression of power; for 
knowledge and power are not one and the same. It 
can easily be seen that great injustice might be done 
such a healer, if the examiners had no criterion except 



134 PRINCIPLES OF OCCULT HEALING 

that of present day medical and surgical knowledge, 
which does not include in its curriculum the etheric 
bodies of men, nor the possibility of cure by the Holy 
Spirit, nor its power to bring out through its tem- 
porary agents the higher potentials of the Health Law. 
Such examinations result in doubting the healer, and 
denying the cure, and yet the fact of the cure remains. 

If, however, the power of the Holy Spirit is admit- 
ted as a fact, then who, not acquainted with the Holy 
Spirit and its methods of working, can determine 
whether the cure is of the Holy Spirit or not? Even 
the disciples, so intimately associated with the Christ 
and His teachings, failed to discriminate, for we read 
that they forbade one who was casting out devils in 
His name to continue the work. When told of it the 
Christ answered: Forbid him not; for there is no 
man which shall do a mighty work in My name, that 
can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not 
against us is for us.* We may reasonably apply His 
own test to the present cases. 

The Report states that the Committee will continue 
its work, and proposes to "formulate a basis upon 
which some more clearly defined relationship and 
cooperation may be secured between ministers of 
religion and members of the medical profession in the 
treatment of disease." 

We offer our sincere gratitude to this Committee, 
which has so nobly and bravely entered this difficult 
field of cooperation in service. 

* St. Mark, IX, 38-40. St. Luke, IX, 49-50. 



